


No Other World But This One

by KendylGirl



Series: When to Let Go [6]
Category: Sherlock (TV), Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms
Genre: Angst, BAMF John, BAMF Sherlock, Established Relationship, Implied/Referenced Torture, Johnlock - Freeform, M/M, Not Canon Compliant, Original Character Death(s), Protective John, Protective Sherlock, True Love, Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-08
Updated: 2018-03-08
Packaged: 2019-03-02 08:07:26
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 8
Words: 25,431
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13314018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KendylGirl/pseuds/KendylGirl
Summary: John and Sherlock must face an old enemy when Cyril Bajzath, Moriarty's former lieutenant, returns for revenge.





	1. Ensnared

**Author's Note:**

> Let me confess this at the outset: I love John and Sherlock, and I firmly believe that they love each other, completely and equally. Therefore, I will not tear one of them down to glorify the other, nor needlessly have them suffer in a lonely, ignorant silence; if I were satisfied with that, I’d have left it to the television series and gone no further.
> 
> The rest of the “When to Let Go” series does not have to be read for this installment to make sense, but it will provide helpful context. Besides that, I would desperately love for you to read it all and (if you’re feeling generous) tell me your thoughts, for better or worse!
> 
> The title is derived from “This Is What Was Bequeathed Us,” a poem by Gregory Orr.

“Sit still.”

“I _am_.”

“No, you are fidgeting.That is the _opposite_ of still.”

Sherlock, perched upon the closed lid of the toilet, slumps his bare back against the cold tank.His legs are flung out to the sides as he straddles the bowl, his flannel pajama pants pulled tight.He growls but grips the edges of the porcelain with his toes to cease the rapid jiggling of his limbs. 

“You’re lucky you’ve no permanent damage, you know.”

“I know.”

“You could’ve been burned.”

“Yes.”

“You could’ve gotten this shit in your eye.”

“Yes.”

“So why are you still fussing like a child?”

“I’m not!”A few moments of silence, then a moderately contrite mumble.“The explosion was reasonably contained.Minimal damage, I’m sure.Why is this taking so _long_?”

John smirks.“Just hush and be patient.”He works the acetone-soaked rag with deliberate strokes over a clump of Sherlock’s hair, matted with a sticky substance he cannot identify.“You want to tell me what happened here?”

“No, I’d prefer not to.”

A dry chuckle.“Well, Bartleby, why don’t you give it a try anyway?”

Sherlock sighs, eyes rolling closed.“Oh, please, must I relive the humiliation?” 

“Ah, yes, you must, because when I’m done here, I’ll be scraping down the countertop and a few cupboard doors, and it would be smashing to know why I’m doing that instead of eating noodles and watching football as I had _planned_ to do.”

John presses gently with two fingers and Sherlock tilts his head to the right so that John can work on the hair over his temple.“Merely a small side project.I got a bit too free with the borax is all.”John leans forward to angle over Sherlock’s long torso, prompting the detective to slouch forward to accommodate him and lean his cheek against John’s warm chest.“If it hadn’t been for the addition of the cyanoacrylate, I could’ve easily shampooed my hair and been done with it.I wouldn’t have needed to bother you.”

“It’s no bother, love.”

Sherlock can feel his mouth pulling up in an unwilling smile despite the situation.Like his hands, John’s voice is steady and soothing.When the beaker had stuttered and shot froth in a giant arc, Sherlock’s agonized howl of “ _Bloody hell_!” had sent John tearing to the kitchen, ready for triage or tourniquets or whatever would be necessary.But as the doctor’s efficient eyes had catalogued no missing limbs nor gushing blood, instead taking in Sherlock’s elegant fingers gripped into useless fists, flung out from his sides in mute rage, while fat globs of goo foamed over his scalp and plopped onto the front of his grey t-shirt, John’s alarm had quickly distilled to reluctant amusement, a grin rippling across his face before he could clamp it down enough to ask Sherlock soberly if he was quite all right.

A few minutes pass before Sherlock huffs, “It’s not worth all this!Let’s just chop it all off!”

John sucks in a breath.“Bite your tongue, Sherlock Holmes,” he clucks softly.While his left works the rag carefully, his right hand slips into the untouched ring of hair at the base of Sherlock’s skull, massaging, working the strands through his fingertips.“These curls are just about my favorite things in the world and are, therefore, totally worth saving.Besides, you’re lucky.”He tilts backward a fraction to catch Sherlock’s eye.“If this gorgeous dark color were from a bottle, our little clean up here could turn you ginger.”

Sherlock sucks in a breath, eyebrows twisted together.“Good lord, John!You’ll give me nightmares!”

John giggles and gives his neck a playful squeeze.

Suddenly, Sherlock is keenly aware of John’s proximity, his strong arms hovering on either side of him and the barest hint of his aftershave tantalizing his nostrils.He loves John like this, though he’d never willingly admit to it.John’s competence, his caring and protective instincts, are some of his most enthralling (and sexiest) attributes for Sherlock to witness.But when those attentions are lavished upon Sherlock himself, the doctor is all but irresistible.

“Just about?”

“Hmmm?”

“You said ‘just about’ your favorite.”His hands skim up John’s thighs and settle around his waist.“Tell me, Doctor, what is your _favorite_ thing?”

John snickers, “Wouldn’t you like to know,” and continues dabbing with the cloth.

But Sherlock notices John has swayed an almost imperceptible inch closer, so Sherlock dips his fingers just into the waistband of John’s faded jeans, kneading the flesh of his lower back with tender presses.“Could it be my hands, John?”

John’s motion stutters—barely a tremor, but Sherlock can feel it—and he clears his throat, “Nope.Forget it.I’ll never tell.”

Sherlock needn’t raise his head; he can hear the smile lilt in the music of John’s voice.He slides his fingers around to the doctor’s belly.“Perhaps I can deduce it…very, very carefully.”He looks up then with an arched eyebrow. 

John’s darkened eyes are on him, and as Sherlock moves his fingers to the fabric of the untucked plaid button-down, John licks his lips.“Give it your best shot,” he murmurs.He resumes his inspection of Sherlock’s scalp.

_Oh, John, challenge accepted._

With deliberate fingers, he undoes one translucent button.

And another.

And another.

Only because he is so close to him does Sherlock hear a small gasp from above.John says nothing, but somehow, his knee has come to rest on the lid in front of Sherlock’s hips, moving him even closer.

Sherlock slides his hands up to part the flaps of the shirt, closing slowly around John’s ribcage.He feels the strong muscles contract under his palms.He strokes his thumbs, up the fine line of hair that runs John’s middle.Absently, he notes that the assault on his scalp has stopped.

“You are a wicked one, aren’t you?”

Sherlock ghosts the warm pads of his thumbs over John’s nipples at the same moment his tongue delves into dark crevice of John’s navel.

The rag drops to the floor.

“Oh, are you finished now, doctor?”Sherlock asks innocently, feeling the bite of two sets of fingernails dig in his shoulders.“Good.”John’s abdomen undulates as Sherlock’s lips and tongue work their way around, punctuating their path with dragging hints of his teeth.“Could it be,” he drawls, “that my mouth is your favorite thing about me?”

John exhales a shuddering breath.“It could be.”He runs his right hand across Sherlock’s trapezius and up the column of his throat, lifting his flushed face with a single index finger under his jaw.He fits his lips against Sherlock’s, and the detective is the one to moan gratefully, relishing the strength, the taste of John, the skill with which he reduces Sherlock down to a grasping, malleable lump of clay.   He follows John’s lead, eagerly mirroring the waves of his movements as the tails of his opened shirt tickle Sherlock’s skin to complete the bloom of gooseflesh that covers him from the top down.When John finally pulls back panting, his eyes stay on Sherlock’s swollen red lips. “But it’s not.” 

“Pity.” 

Sherlock surges forward and captures John’s mouth again, running his tongue around his upper teeth and probing every one of its silken corners.He uses one heel to press the back of John’s knee to collapse his standing leg and bring him down with a grunt onto Sherlock’s lap. _At last_.Long fingers press into John’s spine and circle into the golden feathers of his hair, clutching him as tight as he can in the small space.

One hand feels blindly for the button of John’s jeans.“Sherlock…” he breathes, lifting his hips to assist.

But before Sherlock can twist his fingers, they both hear a shrill, “Woo hoo!” from the sitting room door.

“Not now, Mrs. Hudson!”Sherlock bellows.

“Got your mail here, boys.And some chocolate biscotti from a new recipe.You must give me your honest opinion!”

John rests his forehead against Sherlock’s and sighs.“Just one moment, Mrs. Hudson,” he calls, pushing himself up to a standing position.

Sherlock’s arm reflexively darts out to stop him, but John bites his lip and evades his reach.“Wash your hair,” he scolds softly, buttoning and tucking in his wrinkled shirt, then adjusting himself awkwardly in his pants, “before I scandalize myself in front of our landlady.”

He takes one last look at Sherlock, eyes sweeping him up and down like a physical touch, and disappears through the door. 

By the time Sherlock emerges from his shower, John is brushing crumbs from his face.“—as excellent as the lemon poppyseed, Mrs. Hudson, really.”

She claps her hands together.“My, that’s lovely, John!Thank you, dear!”As he rounds the corner, she pegs Sherlock with a stern finger.“And what have _you_ been up to, young man?What’s all this, then?”She wags the finger in a circle around the goo that remains affixed to the cabinetry. 

Sherlock rolls his eyes. “That’s nothing you need worry about, Mrs. Hudson.I’ve a terrible virus is all,” he replies coolly, reaching for the kettle, “and nary a tissue in the place.”

She jerks her hand back.“Oh, that’s vile, Sherlock.”

“Perhaps, but…”He slaps a dramatic hand to his nose, features pinched, and she takes several cautionary steps backward.“But…oh…I feel another…one…”He stumbles toward her, wheezing.“A…a sneeze…coming on…it’s…right…right…NOW!”

As he shouts hoarsely and splutters into his palm, Mrs. Hudson squeals and skitters out the door.Sherlock flicks the door closed with a smirk and takes a satisfied sip of his tea.

John shakes his head.“You should be ashamed of yourself.”

Sherlock’s eyebrow arches.“Should I?”He takes a deep breath and looks to the ceiling, as if considering the idea.After two seconds, he shrugs.“Nope.I’ve got nothing,” and swallows down more Earl Grey.

John slides off his stool.“God above, what have I gotten myself into?”he murmurs.He reaches up to lay a kiss on Sherlock’s cheek as he passes by, flopping down on the sofa to pick through the mail.

“Anything interesting?”

He tosses envelopes one by one.“Let’s see…Save the Coasts wants donations…you’ve been pre-approved for a Visa—I won’t tell the good people at Save the Coasts that…Carpet World has end-of-season offers…”He picks up a small package, a brown cube of cardboard absent of any writing, turning it around in his hand.“What’s this?Think Lestrade has decided to return the lip balm that you used to—?”

Sherlock snorts, “I certainly hope not.That unfortunate tube belonged to Sergeant Donovan, and if he were even marginally observant, he’d have realized I would never purchase an item with the word ‘dazzleberry’ on it.”

John flicks the lid open with his thumb.

“John?”

The doctor’s face has drained, even his lips turning a stark white.He instantly appears a frozen corpse, and the box totters out of his grip onto the coffee table.

Sherlock skids over.“What?What is it?Tell me what’s wrong.”

John’s dead eyes stare at the box.

Sherlock leans over to peek at the contents.Inside is a single wrapped candy, a crinkled gold foil with a man’s portrait on it, a man in period costume.“Is that—?“

“Mozart.”John’s voice is a wisp.

Sherlock’s brain churns: 

Mozart and candy.So, Mozartkugeln, then.

Austria.

Vienna?No.

Salzburg.

_Oh, God._

“He’s found me, Sherlock.”John finally turns his empty eyes toward him.“Bajzath has found me. _”_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Part Four of the series, "No Choice," gives some insight into John's time in Salzburg.


	2. The Quiet Time

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Mycroft provides more context on the enemy, for better or worse, and the boys try to arm themselves with the one thing that might help them find a solution to the problem: information. Things are never so easy, however, when emotion is part of the equation.

Mycroft Holmes is a patient man.He has made his life that of a constant gardener, planting minute seeds throughout the globe and watching them gradually take root.He decides when to dig, he decides which to foster, and he decides how to harvest. While life may seem random and capricious to the average man, Mycroft goes about the business of a strict management of resources.He controls the amount of light each asset receives, attending the very intensity of the glare—an absence of heat or a dimming of recognition.He manages the winds, ensuring the proper amount of influence to send his new stalks this way or that, bending their skeletons to a future design, shaping them in just the right way.His internal calculations are the ones that determine the very lives that will wax or wane. 

It is a painstaking art that few could comprehend.

But early on, Mycroft knew that such control would take an iron will.Ordinary men in ordinary circumstances could not possibly muster the resolve necessary to do what needs to be done, to cut personal involvement from the equation and make one’s choices on the facts alone, to remain objective when so many forces of biology would push one to the subjective.The sentimental.

This, he sees, is Sherlock’s key value to him.His near life-long association with his brother has been Mycroft’s training ground.Sherlock has been a whirlwind his whole life.When he’d lain screeching as an infant in his cot, Mycroft would stand for hours next to it, watching.His parents would flutter in and out, prattling their coos to the screaming lump and patting Mycroft on the head for being such a good big brother to watch over the new baby, but this did not make Mycroft happy by any means.Their words did not feel like praise; they felt like an indictment.Could they not see that this new child was wild?Could they not see how it discerned their faces and tested the limits of its confines and soaked up its environment like a sponge?Did they miss how it solved puzzles before they were even presented?Did they not guess that it was winning arguments it could not even begin to articulate?

And Mycroft learned quickly that the new baby was most treacherous when it was quiet.When its outbursts faded, it set in earnest upon all manner of nefarious activity.It unscrewed light bulbs or challenged the tensile strength of curtain rods or tested the force of gravity with ceramic figurines.But if Mycroft were smart and if he were subtle, he could corral the baby into perhaps a less interesting, yet more acceptable, game.And if Mycroft were really clever and maneuvered just right, the squawking would begin again, and he could breathe.Only in the quiet times did he have to be at his most vigilant.Only the quiet times were dangerous.

They still are.

When John Watson was uprooted and planted in Prague with Cyril Bajzath, Sherlock experienced an extended period of quiet.Mycroft knew that he would; it was rather the point, after all—to figuratively cut off Sherlock’s legs so that he could not run himself in front of a speeding car.It made logical sense, supported by proven science:give a manageable wound, an inoculation that keeps the patient from succumbing to the plague.The chemotherapy which devastates the patient’s body so that he could ultimately survive a cancer.Such were the established practices of eminently practical people, those who can calmly apply a cost/benefit analysis to one’s entire life. 

The consequences, however, had been unnerving.It was nothing that Mycroft had ever seen before.Sherlock scarcely made a sound after John left his side.It was not mere quiet; it was total silence. And this was not the relative calm amongst the many storms that Mycroft had witnessed as a child; his brother was not gleefully acquiring knowledge of his world at the expense of knick-knacks and a bump on the noggin.It was as if the world that Sherlock had fought so hard to gain dominion over, that had fascinated him utterly from the moment his eyes had slit open to focus on objects that he could not yet understand, no longer held any relevance for him.Anything worth knowing, anything worth investigating and absorbing, had evaporated.

As painful as it was for Mycroft Holmes to admit, he’d never known, for all of his precise planning of seasons, that such a drought could occur.Sherlock had withered instantly, and in the space of less than a year, nearly crumbled to dust.

Though he wishes to deny it vehemently, the experience returned Mycroft to his origins.He became again that unsettled seven-year-old child, watching breathlessly as his baby brother deduced and plotted how best to destroy Mycroft’s entire world, but this time, Sherlock had turned all of his powers for chaos upon himself.

Mycroft knew that he had failed him.Yes, he had done what he had to do, and Sherlock’s body remained intact, but the unseen damage, the burning machete that Sherlock had taken to his own internal world during those nine long months, was incalculable.Yet how can a practical gardener properly quantify the one resource not under his command?How could Mycroft adequately manage an ethereal conviction like emotion?

He could do nothing until circumstances allowed for John’s return, reminding himself not to lose patience when the quiet time was over and the squawking began again.

And as he sits now reclined upon the back of Sherlock’s leather chair, eardrums ringing and dust swirling over his tailored gabardine knee amongst the flurry of Sherlock’s pacing, he suppresses a long-suffering sigh and reminds himself of it once more.

“… could you let this happen, Mycroft?You’ve an entire branch of government working for you—hell, the entire _government_ works for you, and not just _ours_!How is it impossible to keep tabs on a finite number of people, the most dangerous of criminals, who operate on a scale incomparable, whose movements around the globe must be as stealthy as a jetliner in a nitroglycerin plant?And how is it even possible that you have not eliminated this man before now?How?How could he have located _us_ before your minions have located _him_?Does he have to skip by your office door with a bundt cake under his arm before you’d happen upon his scent?What is it that you _do_ all day?”

Mycroft does not respond to the diatribe, glancing under Sherlock’s flopping arm to take in the figure of the doctor perched on a stool in the kitchen.He has a mug in his grip that he’s not made a move to drink from in the last 18.5 minutes, but he has stared into the mug for most of that time frame without seeming to see it is even there.His left leg is hitched up on a rung of the stool, cricked with a tension so brittle it could well snap the bone.

_Too quiet_ , Mycroft diagnoses.

He clears his throat.“Doctor, I know it’s already been an unpleasant morning, but I think you should see these.”

John blinks, breaking his reverie.He slides wordlessly from his perch and comes to the desk where Mycroft has tossed a file of pictures.“When you received your package with the morning post, this arrived simultaneously at my office.”

Sherlock peers over his shoulder while John flattens the seam of the folder and spreads out the images on the desktop.

The images show a large box lined in red velvet with what appears to be a furry animal inside.John squints and quirks his neck for a moment before he sucks in a sharp breath.

“I believe you knew him,” Mycroft intones

“My God, it’s…it’s Peters.”

Sherlock absorbs the details of John’s face before he casts a sharp glance at Mycroft.“An employee of mine,” he clarifies.“Well, a piece of him."

“He was your contact,” Sherlock says woodenly, fitting the pieces together.

John slumps into the desk chair.“I last saw him in Salzburg.He was…he…”John looks like he’s going to be sick, but Mycroft is not foolish enough to believe that the gruesome images have affected the good doctor’s constitution.He’s quite certain that it is the result of misplaced guilt or other useless feelings of responsibility.

“Mr. Peters remained in Austria for four additional weeks following your last meeting—at Hohensalzburg Castle, if memory serves.He continued to conduct reconnaissance on the situation there while you were…indisposed.”At that, Sherlock whips around to face him, features an immediate livid purple, eyes like laser beams.Lesser men would surely have cowed under the ferocity of it, but Mycroft stares back, unmoved.He is fully aware that his brother’s anger is a sloppy covering to the soft center which the doctor occupies at his core, so he merely sniffs and crosses over to stand next to John at the desk.“That was the end of his assignment.He returned to England, and over the past eighteen months, has been on operations on several continents.The most recent was to monitor a situation in Caracas, though we’ve had no reason to believe that Bajzath had any connections there, nor any reason to associate Mr. Peters with the disintegration of his criminal enterprise in Europe.”

John clutches one of the glossy prints in his left hand so tightly that it bends around his digits like a funnel.His hand does not shake.He raises his face to peer at Mycroft, expression composed, though his words are a razor.“How about now?”

Mycroft grasps his hands behind his back and bites back a sigh.“I prefer to deal in what we _do_ know.”He bends to his leather attache and plops another file on the desk in front of the doctor.“Cyril Bajzath, born Cyril Nicolacakis, April 1970—father a Greek businessman, mother a Hungarian national who died following his birth.The boy was consequently abandoned by his father after her death and grew up an orphan in a small village in Hungary near what was then the Czech border.He endeared himself to a dubious neighbor boy, his only known associate—I suppose ‘friend’ is the popular term—Márk Bajzath.Márk was connected through a cousin to a local gang, specializing in strictly small-time offenses, but they’d set their sights on better opportunities across the border after the Hungarian economy faltered in the mid-1980s; Nicolacakis and Bajzath were then just fifteen years old.

“The boys trailed these rag-tag hooligans to Prague but were left largely to their own devices, so they made do, survived on their wits as petty thieves and Cyril’s innate brutality.He graduated quickly to assault as a basic necessity of everyday life.Cyril found he was quite good at it, and he began to cultivate a bit of a reputation amongst the criminal classes.”

“Jesus, Mycroft, make a point!” Sherlock fumes.

“In 1988, Márk was beaten to death in the street.Cyril sought revenge, murdering the perpetrator and his entire family, which included his wife, three children, two elderly parents, and a lhasa apso.It was a turning point.He felt no loyalty to a father he’d never known, so he took Márk’s surname as a vivid memento mori; soon after, the most notorious criminal organization in the city took him earnestly into their business.Cyril quickly rose to power, and this organization just happened to be ensnared nine years later within the web of James Moriarty.” 

John scrubs a hand over his face.“Evil’s perfect storm.Charming.”

“We must keep in mind that Bajzath’s only notion of family has derived from his business, a fact which Moriarty knew and exploited; it insured his loyalty and his desire to eliminate all who would betray it; this worked fine until he was led to believe that James himself—his _de facto_ father—had turned against him.Apparently, he no longer believes this to be true, else he’d never waste his time seeking you out.”

John’s eyes slip closed.“So it was him.Moriarty.Somehow, he is the one who put Bajzath onto you and Peters, onto me at Baker Street.”He sinks down onto the coffee table.“Isn’t that just brilliant.”

Mycroft pauses, looking from the doctor to Sherlock, who is facing away, hands gripping the mantle of the fireplace.“This man is a conglomeration, persona non grata the world over—and as a man without a country, he’s unmotivated by patriotism or any such paltry concept.He is about people—loyalty and betrayal, jealousy and reward.These are the only abstractions he can understand.”

John stands and wanders to the window to use the filtered daylight as he flips through the papers in the manilla folder. “It would have been nice to know _before_ , Mycroft. _Before_ you sent me into the lion’s den, stupid and blind.”He chuckles humorlessly, “I don’t know why it surprises me that your grand plan two years ago would involve exploiting the psyche of a dangerous criminal.And I really have to wonder who’s truly the more frightful—a hardened criminal who uses weapons, or the diplomat who weaponizes criminals?” 

Mycroft’s hands slide into his pockets.“Would it have changed your decisions, Doctor?”

John turns sharply, and by the minute pursing of his lips, it is clear he feels the pull of scar tissue on his back, the constant reminders of his mission.His eyes dart to Sherlock, whose shoulders stiffen as his grip on the mantle intensifies, then to Mycroft, who regards him silently.“No,” John responds quietly, turning back to the window, “not a single one.”

The doctor stops on a grainy image of Bajzath as a young man, probably no more than twenty-one.The picture’s been taken from above.Bajzath is striding down the street, his face turned over his shoulder as he smiles at someone out of frame.John holds it up, looking almost in disbelief, for the photo makes the brute he’d come to know almost appear playful, vulnerable.

Human.

He drops the file on the desk and crosses his arms in front of his chest.“Look, I get it, Mycroft—monsters are made, not born.Is all of this supposed to engender sympathy?Because I don’t give a shit about his hard-luck story.However he got there, he’s a monster now, and he must be stopped.”

“Of course.It is not sympathy I hope to engender, but _strategy_.The better one can see his prey, the faster one can eliminate it.”He pauses, turning his head to Sherlock, unsure if his brother is capable just now of reading the tight resolution underlying his impassive face.“I promise, this shall be priority one.”

 

* * *

 

 

Sherlock takes the uneven steps two at a time, the soles of his shoes grating on the asphalt in the relative quiet of the pre-dawn street.He reaches the bridge’s walkway and makes his way to the center.The wind is strong here and parts his hair as he bends his face down into the collar of his coat.He squats abruptly and pulls a paper from between the bricks, rolled neatly like a cigarette.He replaces it with a  £ 20 note and walks on.

While John has spent the last three days reading intelligence reports forwarded to them by Mycroft’s office couriers, Sherlock has spent the time gathering his own data.If Bajzath has brought himself into their territory— _his_ territory—then Sherlock will use every bit of advantage that it affords him.If it is one thing that Sherlock Holmes knows, it is the rhythm of a place that has been his home for his entire life.It feels to him like a cooperative, a living body that functions in its own brand of ideal harmony; when an invader throws its humors out of line, it is as evident to Sherlock as if it were his own body, and even if he were not bent upon destroying its heart, Cyril Bajazath is exactly the kind of melaina kholé to descend the clouds and churn the stomach of the entire metropolis.

The members of Sherlock’s homeless network, his eyes and ears throughout the city, have been steadily feeding him information.If something has changed in the last few months, soured or soared, he wants to know.Details seemingly irrelevant on their surface often combine to create the most startling of stories desperate to be told.

Thus, this evening, after John’s eyes had turned bleary and closed, Sherlock had eased the file from his lap in favor of a warm blanket, kissed his cheek, and left the flat to collect the puzzle pieces scattered for him around greater London.

The next day, the unfortunate wall space behind the sofa becomes his canvas, a life-sized cork board where he assembles the scraps of scrawled notes, news clippings, images, and the like to read the plot that they keep concealed within them:an environmental group is opposing the use of spiked fences to combat an increase in pigeon population in the park; Larry the Foot hasn’t been seen in two weeks; the Wapping High Street is closed on its west end due to a reported water main break; the Sunshine Trails traveling circus cancelled its show dates for the next four weeks; Greta doesn’t sleep by the bookstore anymore; the helium shortage has gone critical; Bernard’s Pastries is selling crullers again; the surgery on Peckham Road was vandalized.

It is well after nightfall when John shuffles next to him and stares up at the collage.“Find Waldo yet?”

“Hmmm?"

“You’ve been staring at this wall for fourteen hours straight.Plan to take a break anytime soon?”

“That depends.Do you plan to tell me what you’ve been working up to all evening?”

John looks at him.“What?How did you—“

“You’ve nursed the same snifter for approximately forty-seven minutes, and in that time, the newspaper page has flipped just three times.You’re an above average reader, so clearly the _Times_ ’ vocabulary is not the challenge, and this brand of whiskey is one of your favorites, so it cannot be a sour flavor putting you off.Ergo, something’s troubling you, something you’re reluctant to say, something unpleasant that I will not like.”Sherlock turns toward him.“I dislike seeing you uncomfortable, and I’m rather concerned that I’ve done something terrible that I’d not realized was terrible, so please just put us both out of our misery and say what is on your mind.”

John stared slack-jawed for several seconds before his mouth cricked into a smile.“God, no matter how many times you do that, it still gets me,” he murmurs, almost to himself.He plunks down his glass on the table and steps away, sitting on the edge of the desk, and takes a deep breath.“I think I should leave.”

Sherlock’s eyes fly open.“What?What does that mean?”

John looks at the floor.“I mean leave Baker Street.For good.”

“John, for the love of God, what are you talking about?”Sherlock’s lungs feel tight.“So I was right, I did do something terrible, is that it?”

He holds up a hand.“No, Sherlock, no.It’s nothing like that.”He leans forward, his voice emphatic.“There’s nothing you could do, _ever_ , that would make me leave you.That is impossible.It’s nothing to do with that.”

Sherlock swallows hard, a bead of sweat forming from nothing and rolling down into his shirt collar.“The motive is irrelevant if the result is the same,” he bites out.

John looks up at him.His eyes are rimmed in red.He licks his lips.“I can’t…I don’t want you in the middle of this.I’d never forgive myself if you were hurt, and if I’m here, then I’m endangering you.”

Sherlock’s tone turns bitter.“Are you a complete moron?”He takes a shaky step toward John, eyes dark and hollow.“John, that man only knows of your existence because of me.Do you have any idea how awful that is?”He is unable to keep the tremor from his voice now.He’s spent countless nights in the last two years listening to John snore softly while he traced the divots and mottled scars of John’s back, suffocating under a guilt he had not wanted to acknowledge, even as it weighed on his chest like an anvil.“Mycroft sent you to him so that I would be safe.You went so that I would be safe.You _stayed._ So. That. I. Would. Be. Safe.If I live a thousand years, I’ll never forgive myself for that.”

John stares at him, eyes full.“Sherlock…”

“No, John.The answer is no.I can never repay that debt, so I’ll thank you to stop adding to the bill.”He waves a hand.“I am perfectly capable of handling myself, and besides that, the jig is up—Bajzath clearly knows where we live.There’s little point in fleeing now.”

"But he isn't after you yet. He wants revenge. He just wants me.”

" _So do I_!”Sherlock's face is fierce. He rushes forward and grabs John around his elbows and pulls him close. "He doesn't get to have you this time, John.I absolutely _cannot_ survive that again, so if you are truly concerned for my well-being, you will stay and we will do this together.”

John's heart throbs, searing painfully inside his chest. He wraps his hand around the back of Sherlock's neck and pulls him down until their foreheads rest on one another, each steadying the other.For several long moments, they stay like that, sharing in the same air. 

"Just the two of us against the rest of the world, yeah?" John murmurs into the stillness.

Sherlock smiles faintly, brushing his cheek against John's temple. "Isn't it always?"

John leans his head back, his eyes intent. He brushes back a curl from the pale forehead and grips the broad shoulders. "Yes. Always.”He tilts forward, gathering Sherlock fully into his crushing embrace.

John clutches at Sherlock’s back and blinks hard. _This is it.He is all that matters_. 

But even now, John knows—he _knows_ that he has to find a way to end this, whatever the cost to himself.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Mr. Peters appears in "No Choice," part 4 of the series.
> 
> A better look at the scope of Sherlock's quiet time can be found in chapters 4-5 of "When to Let Go" and in "Thief," part 3 of the series.


	3. Derailed

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John interview an old enemy, and Bajzath strikes out.

He didn’t like it.Not one bit.

As soon as the lift doors hiss closed, Sherlock feels the prickle of it under the skin of his neck, the oozing dissatisfaction that has grown claws to pick its way down his spine and make him twitch like a slippery fish netted on the deck of a trawler, frozen by cold and empty air where the soothing waters had once been.

Nearly two weeks had passed since the poisonous bit of candy had arrived at the flat.Sherlock’s data collection had been extensive, but though a wing had been added to his mind palace so that he may process the bits constantly in the periphery of his mind, thus far he’d gained no headway on the shadowy foe lurking just beyond their reach.

It makes Sherlock feel helpless, and this is not a feeling he is accustomed to having.It is a gnawing emptiness that he tried to fill with activity—relentless mental energy pumped outward as pacing and texting and ranting, the last exercised best when unfortunate visitors would stop by with outlandish requests such as “Would you please pay the overdue water bill?” or “Can you help us find this wanton jewel thief?”Why these people thought Sherlock could give a whit for their irrelevant detritus was a mystery he had neither the time nor the inclination to solve.All he had an ounce of care for was unraveling of the impenetrable ribbons of uncertainty surrounding the whereabouts of Cyril Bajzath before it was too late.

And Sherlock knows vaguely that this situation is one that ordinarily would fill him with glee—being pursued by a dangerous renegade?Stalked by a psychopath bent upon cold-blooded murder?Few dilemmas could enchant him more, one who has lived his life in pursuit of the ultimate high.There was a time that he thought he could not be happy unless he were running the city center with his hair on fire or leaping over a chemical precipice out into the thin air of an unfathomable abyss.

And then he met John Watson.

John is a supernatural force, Sherlock has decided, and not in the ridiculous popular culture sense of that concept.John is far more powerful than the typical defenses that Sherlock had built up to keep the rest of the human race at bay.John’s presence in his life rewrote Sherlock’s internal manual.Without issuing a single order, the captain had changed all the rules.John has the ability to make him feel alive without making it necessary to taunt death first.John can make him feel dizzy and breathless and wonderfully terrified by simply fixing him with a particular look, by raising an eyebrow and quirking his lips into the most maddening of Mona Lisa smiles.John could empty Sherlock’s adrenal glands with a quiet moan and a slow touch from his gentle and careful hands.

And it is because John is primarily the one in danger that makes the dilemma before the detective untenable, terrifying in all the wrong ways.He wants to love it.He wants to run headlong onto the tightrope of danger and laugh down the barrel of a gun.But that’s not possible anymore.The idea of gambling with his own life was intriguing; the idea of gambling with John’s was incomprehensible.

He had to be stealthy, be deliberate and careful.

Thus, in an act of sheer desperation, Sherlock found himself contacting Lestrade.

“You asking me for a _favor_ , Sherlock?” The DI’s voice had sparkled with amusement.

“No,” Sherlock had spat, “I’m making the ambitious assumption that you might actually have a purpose for once.”

Lestrade had chuckled, “Aw, aren’t you sweet when you beg.A regular charmer.” 

Two hours later, he received a text: _Tomorrow, 3:00._

But as the lift doors pull together, he glances at John out of the corner of his eye, seeing the painfully tight set of his jaw, the odd flip to his collar that makes it seem John had dressed in a hurry when in reality he’d been up before dawn.As they ascend the floors, people filter in and out, vaguely familiar faces greeting John and chattering away, and Sherlock gradually gets pushed to the opposite corner.Thankfully, no one attempts to engage him in their inane small talk, and it allows Sherlock the relative anonymity to observe John as the latter smiles tightly and forces himself to respond politely; he nods and laughs and wishes everyone well when they exit, but as soon as they’re gone, the same blank look returns to his face, wiping away any traces of the animation that had been there seconds before.

Finally, they step off and wind their way around the maze of cubicles to Greg’s office, Sherlock barely even registering Sally’s familiar gaze of malevolent suspicion as they pass her desk, the phone to her ear and spiral notebook in her hand no deterrent to swiveling around to follow their path down the aisle.

Lestrade scarcely has time to raise his head before Sherlock bursts through the closed door without even the pretense of a knock.He flops down into one of the chairs.“Where is she?” he demands.

The inspector throws up a hand as a disembodied voice responds, “Oi, what’s that, then?”

Greg’s face reddens, and he angles his neck over the desk phone’s speaker.“Apologies, sir.Apparently, there’s a small situation here that I need to—“

“Right,” the voice clips.“Go on, then.But we’ll talk later, Lestrade.Count on that.”

A loud dial tone sounds before Lestrade can press a button to disconnect.

John pushes the door closed with a quiet snick and sits down next to Sherlock.“Afternoon, Greg.”He nods at the phone.“Sorry to interrupt.”

Lestrade grimaces.“Oh, the chief’s on a bit of a tear.”He looks at Sherlock.“I had to call in more than a few favors on this one, and the big man’s got a day’s worth of guff all before his tea had gone cold.”

Sherlock’s face remains unmoved.“Where is she?” he repeats.

John sighs.“I— _we_ appreciate what you’ve done here.She may not have anything to offer, but she’s one of the few tangible connections we have.Any solid lead is better than what we’ve gotten so far.”

Greg leans forward in his chair.“Look, John, this whole affair is pretty unbelievable, and it has to be absolute hell on you, mate.After everything you went through?Forget it.You know I’ll help in any way I can.”

Sherlock feels a bit of John’s tension ebb, and his voice warms a degree.“I know.Really, it means a lot.Thanks, Greg.”

Lestrade flips open one of the manilla folders littering his desk.“Miss Aneta Wenceslas has been serving out her fraud conviction in Downview, and doing so, to this date, without incident.”He raises his head, looking from one and the other.“She was brought in this morning on the transport.She’s waiting for you in Interrogation 2.”

When he sweeps the white door open, the face that greets Sherlock is not the haughty, composed one that had sneered at him from the modern backdrop of the Hickman Gallery.Shackled wrists rest on the smooth metal table, the nails naked and trimmed down to the nubs.Her once neatly groomed hair is a mussed tangle of grey, face drawn and lined.

She tries unsuccessfully to hide her surprise as he and John take the seats opposite her.John pulls out a black pen and a small notebook, smoothing the page out before him with a solid, deliberate stroke.One of the significant conundrums Sherlock has grappled with over the years about John Watson has always been the wonderful dichotomy of his hands.They are slender yet strong, nicked by years of hard wear but soft to the touch, capable of the sweetest of caresses or deadliest of grips; they have been a source of endless fascination for the detective, who finds a certain thrill inherent in being held at night with tender care by the very fingers that can work a trigger with lethal accuracy.And it seems the more unsettled John’s core, the more steady his hands become.Right now, Sherlock can feel the doctor practically vibrating next to him, and he watches John’s hands move with deadly precision across the blank paper, grateful not to be on the other side of the table when John raises his eyes and pins the woman with his piercing gaze.

Miss Wenceslas must feel it, too.She flushes slightly, then sits straighter.“Am I supposed to be impressed?”Her voice is gravelly, as if it has not been used in quite some time.

“You should be.”Sherlock’s lips quirk.

“What do you want?”

“Information.”

She smirks, “Do you jest, Mr. Holmes?What could I possibly tell you that you don’t already know?”

Sherlock sits back in his chair and smiles.“That _is_ a safe assumption, typically, Ms. Wenceslas, but in this case, you may be able to make your own living circumstances more comfortable by telling us about a colleague of yours."

Her eyes narrow.“Colleague?What do you mean?”

“Cyril Bajzath.”John clips the words out like snapping twigs.

She scoffs and rolls her head back to glare at the ceiling. “Now I know you jest.”

Sherlock wags a finger. “Tut-tut, madame. We’ve established that I’m quite serious, so I do wish you’d keep up.”He leans forward abruptly.“Mr. Bajzath is in London currently, and I’d very much like to pay him a visit.All you need tell me is where.”

“You fool.You expect me to betray my countrymen for the likes of you?”

“But he's betrayed you, Ms. Wenceslas," Sherlock tells her smoothly. "You were imprisoned here for your own protection. Had you been deported, you'd have not made it out of the airport."

She bristles, “You’re a liar.This,” she raises her arms and clangs the manacles, “is no gift from the British government.”She looks away.“In Czechoslovakia, we look after our own."

"Precisely why you will rot here."

“He’s no Czech hero.”John cuts in, voice so menacing that it makes the fine hair of Sherlock’s arms stand on end.“The only thing he has ever been to your homeland is a parasite.”His contemptuous stare does not waver from her as he shifts his focus.“We’re wasting our time, Sherlock.”

Sherlock takes his lead, sneering, “It would seem so.You don’t actually know anything, do you, Aneta?You were just a pawn for them both, Bajzath and Moriarty.An empty frame, discarded on the floor of that tacky gallery you were so proud of.”

Her face develops splotches of red.She slams the lump of her joined wrists into her lap and cranes over the tabletop.“You bastard!I know that when the Gulf Stream lands Cyril in any city, it does what he wants. _Everyone_ does what he wants.I know that he will not waste a single breath on any of you.He will devour you.I’ve seen it many times.I’ve seen him snap bones like grissini and savor the blood like Chianti.”

Sherlock throws his head back and shakes with laughter, wiping playfully at his eyes.“Oh, that’s good!You’re at least entertaining, I’ll give you that!”His chortles dissipate, and he fixes her with a mocking grin.“Tell me, dear lady, am _I_ supposed to be impressed?”

Ms. Wenceslas bares her teeth and shakes her head.“You, Mr. Holmes.You will know soon.He has the heart of a lion, and when he roars, rivers run red.”Her dark eyes glint.“If Cyril has you in his sights, you will know what it is to scream for mercy.”She looks at John, down at the ropes of smooth, purple flesh on the underside of his wrists peeking out from the cuffs of his shirt, then up to his eyes with a spark of wicked mirth. "But then, you already do, don't you?" 

John's face is a mask.His whole body has gone rigid, causing the fist gripping the pen to tighten steadily like a vice.As he stares blankly at her, the plastic snaps, sending a spray of ink into her face.She jerks back with a cry.

John doesn't move, not a twitch, even as the viscous black liquid runs down his fingers. 

Then, he abruptly stands, throwing his chair back. It tips and clatters to the ground. "We're done here.”He rips the door open and disappears before Sherlock can react. 

When he rises slowly to follow, Ms. Wenceslas releases a raspy chuckle. "Goodbye, Mr. Holmes. Make your peace, yeah?  Say your prayers like a good boy.”

 

* * *

 

Lestrade stands with his arms crossed outside of the observation room that is at the opposite end of the narrow hallway.He puts his hand on Sherlock’s shoulder as he tries to pass.“John’s popped into the loo,” he says quietly.“Just give him a minute, all right?”

Sherlock starts to open his mouth to retort, but swallows the words back down. He doubts he’d be welcome if he corners John in there, and experience has taught him well that John will not give voice to anything until he’s prepared to do so.(Sherlock recalls once spending a solid week trying to coerce John into explaining properly why he was afraid of parakeets—a task far more onerous than extracting a middle name to account for the H—and after four screaming matches and thirty-five random deductions of a personal nature, they’d almost reduced Baker Street to rubble.)Apart from that, Sherlock finds he has not a clue what to say anyway.John’s face had been scarcely recognizable before he had stormed from the interrogation room, and Sherlock would be lying to himself if he’d claimed it wasn’t the least bit unsettling to witness.

A few minutes later, John emerges, absently flattening the front of his shirt with his left hand. _Cold water to the face—eyelashes wet but no tears shed.Respiration increased, eyes opened an extra two millimeters—feigning energy, alertness. Wants to appear upbeat, likely for my benefit.Shoulders curved, posture compromised—excess tension in the latissiumus dorsi._ _Left index bent back past parallel—trying to keep his fist from clenching._

Lestrade waits and watches John approach, then glances back and forth between him and Sherlock.Finally, he shakes his head.“Come on, you two.”

“Pardon me?”

The inspector shrugs on his trench.“You two.MacGregor’s.Now.”

“I’ve no desire to—“

“Thanks, Greg, but—“

“Save it,” Lestrade orders.“We should talk, and before you both blow a bloody gasket, you need a drink first.”He holds the lift door open, adding dryly, “I sure as hell know _I_ do.”

MacGregor’s Pub is on the next street, the short walk likely why is it a favorite of NSY, at least if its present population were any indication.Sherlock notes two inspectors, four sergeants, and a handful of young patrolmen eager to become regulars and endear themselves to their superiors—particularly the one whose pant hem and knuckle-cracking indicate he’d recently been a street hustler.

When they enter, Lestrade and the bartender exchange a wave, and Lestrade ushers them to a booth in the corner.They’ve barely removed their coats before three foaming pints appear before them.Sherlock’s nose crinkles and the inspector chuckles.“Better drink up, Sherlock, or Charlie’ll make you wipe down the bar with your shirt.”

“That would be incredibly ambitious of him,” he replies aridly but takes a sip from the glass nonetheless.

Lestrade shakes his head, hand wrapping around his glass.“Well, that was disappointing as hell.Not what you had in mind for today, I imagine, but I guess it was always a long shot.”

John’s features are pallid and morose.“Completely pointless,” he comments flatly.

“Ah, no worries there, John.Did I ever tell you about the armed robbery suspect I interviewed in—what was it now?—2003?Just been promoted to sergeant and I was scared shitless.So this enormous bloke comes in and—“ 

Lestrade drones on and Sherlock tunes out.It is fairly obvious that this little stroll down memory lane is not for his benefit anyway; it is his clumsy way of trying to pull John out of his darkness, so Sherlock elects not to interfere and pulls into himself to again observe John from the side.He feels he’s had little opportunity to monitor their situation with anything resembling his hallmark objectivity, and Sherlock is thrown without the solidity of his own armor to keep him in place, a key ingredient of which is his capacity for cold reason.He desperately wants to—no, _needs_ to—clear his mind of the fog that worry and anger and (if he really wants to listen to the echoes in the chambers of his heart) stark fear have stirred up.

And, again, he could deal with these demons well enough if the threat were looming over his own head.But to have John’s safety in question numbs his neural net in a way that has littered his mind palace with choking vines and miscellaneous rubbish and sudden winding passages inserted there involuntarily.Doors appear, guarded by an unnamed, unacknowledged specter of animal ferocity—sharp teeth bared and claws extended whenever he approaches them.

What lurks within he dares not question.

Sherlock pretends to examine patrons around the bar while he actually examines John minutely as the latter digs into the marred wooden table with his thumbnail while giving occasional smirks and nods to Lestrade’s tale.Inside his head is a loud snarl, and he pries open a metal portal for a peek inside:a seemingly ordinary Thursday when he’d slid into bed next to the solid body turned toward the wall, easing himself down with muted and subtle movements, thinking John long asleep and not wishing to disturb his slumber; but suddenly, John had started talking, murmuring aloud the horrid dreams that came to him as soon as his eyelids closed:  the icy concrete room in Salzburg, the intermittent hum of the single fluorescent bulb, the sickening coo of Bajzath in his ear while he pressed a flame to John’s skin and the unhinged cackle as he watched it turn the flesh from red to black.

Then he discerns himself, face declined behind the soft blonde hair, pressing the heel of his hand into his mouth to keep him from screaming, from begging John to stop talking, to never say these things ever again.And when John had at last gone quiet, he’d moved closer to Sherlock, reaching back and pulling the long arms around him, and Sherlock had wrapped him up and held him fast and kissed his neck, wiping surreptitiously at his tears with the edge of his thumb, swallowing repeatedly to rid himself of the sharp pain in his windpipe.

The door slams shut again, thrusting him back to the clinks and chatter of the pub.

John grimaces, “Well, I should’ve let you go with Sherlock, Greg.I was not much of a help.”He strums pointedly the greyish fingers of his left hand, slightly stained from the ink.

“Not sure I would’ve helped much, either, since Mr. Wonderful here hasn’t figured out that you catch more flies with honey.He’d rather use cyanide.”He grins and takes a large gulp of ale.

“My methods are sound.Ms. Wenceslas may have revealed more than she believes she did.”

Lestrade crosses his arms.“That so?”

John turns toward him.“What do you mean?”

“She does enjoy her melodrama—that much we knew—and her outburst certainly reflected that deplorable flair.But perhaps we can use it:if an ocean current is going to ‘land’ someone here, figuratively speaking, then it is reasonable to assume Bajzath’s come by water, or at the very least, is based there.”

“Gulf Stream,” John echoes, looking at Greg, a flash of hope sparking in his eyes.

Lestrade’s rubs his temple.“Right.Ok.That doesn’t exactly narrow down our options, though.There’s no shortage of waterfront on an island cut by a river the size of this one.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes.“Lestrade, your profound confusion makes me fear for this entire city.”He leans over the table a bit.“This gives us at least a direction—moorings and marinas, venues for hire, and—“

The inspector waves an arm in his face.“Yeah, yeah, got it, thank you.All I mean is that it will take a bit of time.I can’t exactly task a legion of officers to check every dock on the Thames.”He drains his ale.“But I’ll see what I can do.”

The three emerge onto the street as the sun dies at the horizon, the wind gusting up and making Sherlock tuck the folds of his Belstaff a bit tighter.John puts his hand on Lestrade’s shoulder and takes a few steps with him, their words lost in the noise around them of passing traffic and the growl of a revving engine.Sherlock pulls out his phone and walks the opposite direction to the corner, clicking in the numbers to ring one of Mycroft’s many phones.

Sherlock huffs, listening to the rings, mentally composing a scathing text to send if there’s no reply.As he waits, his eyes fall on the dark car parked by the curb on the opposite side of the street as its engine spikes again.He notes absently the lack of registration plates.The windows are tinted and a white haze surrounds it, indicating it’s idled there for quite some time. _Surveillance_.

Its xenon headlights pop on.

As the dulcet tones of Mycroft’s voicemail greeting buzz in his ear, the tumblers in Sherlock’s brain fall into place.

_No!_

The car jerks out of its spot and accelerates at an unnatural angle.Car horns blare as it cuts across the lanes.

Sherlock whips around toward the two figures yet illuminated by the yellow light streaming from the windows of the pub.“JOHN!”

The doctor’s head snaps up as the car is about to jump the curb.Like lightning, he thrusts himself forward and gives Greg a massive shove away before toppling backward onto the concrete.


	4. Hit, Run

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John both struggle with their own demons as they try to come to grips with Bajzath's looming danger, but things are about to take a nasty turn.

The hideous wail of the siren still echoes in Sherlock’s ears.

For a moment he yet stands on the sidewalk, moored in place, seeing a flash of blonde hair as it vanishes below his field of vision, flinching at the screech of rubber and smash of glass as the enormous car grazes a light pole before turning northward to disappear around the next block.

The chronometer of his limbic brain warps time, so it had seemed hours before he hadmanaged to retrace his steps up the neat squares of concrete to where John had fallen.

But he is not there.

By the time Sherlock reaches him, John has already crawled the distance to where Greg lay writhing, keeping the inspector as flat and still as possible with one hand while dialing 999 with the other.He barks a few words into the phone and then lets it clatter to the ground, ripping off his jumper and using it to cushion and immobilize Greg’s head.He leans down to whisper questions to Greg, hands roving with deft movements over parts of his body.As startled patrons pour out of MacGregor’s, John snaps orders at them for scissors and clean flannels and other supplies.By the time the ambulance arrives three minutes later, he’s stemmed the gushing blood on Greg’s lolling foot, assessed his vitals, and secured the arm that had swollen severely at the joint.

And the whole time Sherlock watches him work, shivering and enthralled and utterly loathing himself.For while he trembles like an imbecile in the periphery, not adequately able to process that John had almost been murdered in front of his eyes, the doctor calmly and efficiently saves a life.

Now Sherlock stands next to Greg’s bed in the A&E, watching John through a gap in the curtain as he conducts a hushed but animated conversation with the attending physician.John’s hair is spiked and disheveled, cheek sporting a bloody rash from where he’d skidded across the sidewalk.His pants are ripped and gape at the knee, a giant swath of blood across his shirtfront from where he’d hunched over to tend to Greg’s leg.

_God, he’s perfect._

Greg moans a bit as the blood pressure cuff beeps and begins to inflate.John had pushed him hard enough so that he’d avoided a direct hit, but the edge of the car’s front bumper had clipped his left side, leaving the shoulder dislocated from the arm, a chunk of bone severed from his hip, and an ankle fractured in three places.

Sherlock watches the monitor’s lines and numbers; oxygenation and heart rate within acceptable ranges.He gives an illicit skimming to Lestrade’s nearby chart—no cranial or spinal damage revealed by CT scan.The hissing dissipates and the blinking lines finally form numbers; blood pressure slightly elevated but reasonable.In all, it seems assured that the inspector will live to grumble his impressive vocabulary of expletives about the significant pain he will encounter during the months to come.

The curtain rips open.

Sally is panting, fists clenched at her side.Her distraught eyes run quickly over Lestrade’s still form in the bed, then land blazing on Sherlock.

"I knew it! I knew it was only a matter of time before you killed us all.”

Sherlock stares at her, his face blank. She seems to take it as a confirmation of his lack of feelings--the psychopath who cares for merely for facts, not for people. She doesn’t seem to consider the extra layer of faintness to his pallor, nor the deepened and watery aspect to his eyes. That Sherlock may have been shaken by his experience is not even on her radar, but he refuses to plead with Sally, to give her the satisfaction of knowing anything about him beyond her limited assumptions.

Sally leaps toward him, her lip curled in a near snarl. "Get out!Get out of here, you disgusting freak!Look what you’ve _done_!This is all your fault!"

"Shut.Your.Mouth.”

John's words crack like a door slam that sucks all the oxygen from the room.

Sally whips her head towards him and raises a rigid finger, as if she's about to rail on him, too. But John takes a step forward, quick and purposeful, and though he's not lifted a hand, the set of his blood-streaked face is vicious enough to pull even Sergeant Donovan up short. "You'll not say one more word to him, do you understand me? Not one more _syllable_.”

His voice is rough, pitched low, but it slices the air like a bullwhip.

"You will show him the proper respect for every time you lot have crawled to him for help, begged him to save your jobs, got him to save your _lives,_ over and over again.He's worth ten of you, Sergeant, and you will treat him as such or leave him the hell alone and _do your own fucking work_!”

The entire bay at A &E seems to have fallen silent.John’s face remains motionless, his eyes nearly black. "This was not Sherlock's doing—not one bit of it.This— _all_ of this—is _my_ fault." His eyes flicker to the bed, then down to his own fist, which is clenched tight. "And I will fix it myself."He throws one last look at Greg, his expression softening minutely before he executes a perfect about-face and disappears. 

Sherlock's head swivels to follow John's retreating form, breathing labored for reasons he cannot explain.

He hears Greg's raspy whisper from the bed: "Christ, go after him, you tosser.”

He turns back a moment to meet the inspector’s weary eyes.In a brief moment of clarity, it dawns on him how good a man Lestrade truly is, though Sherlock rarely is willing to give him the acknowledgment he deserves.Over the course of years, Lestrade has managed to more or less be solidly in his corner, sometimes maddeningly so, working around the strident insults and easy arrogance that so many never get past.Sherlock returns the look with what he hopes is gratitude. 

By the time he gets outside, John is stalking down the next block.Sherlock races after him, dodging pedestrians until he is able to grab at John's forearm to stop him from hailing a nearby cab.  "John!  Wait, John, please.This is patently ridiculous.For once, be logical!You _cannot_ blame yourself.NONE of this is your doing.”

John will not meet his eyes.“Leave me alone.”He tries to brush past Sherlock.

Sherlock steps directly into his path.“No.”

When John Watson is upset—not just angry, but near murderous—he does not shout.Instead, his voice lowers to a tone below that of his normal speaking voice, yet it manages to be more terrifying than any animal’s death scream.Now, John’s voice drops to a dangerous level.“I’m not kidding, Sherlock.You get out of my way.Right.Now.”

Sherlock’s head shakes slowly.After a moment, he repeats, “You are not to blame.”

John advances on him quickly, his face a savage snarl, and Sherlock finds himself retreating several steps on instinct.“What do you mean?”John barks.“Why the hell not?And you’re a fine one to preach to me about logic when you’ve somehow blamed _yourself_ for what happened to _me_ , haven’t you?”

John shoves him hard, and Sherlock stumbles into the mouth a small alley.“It’s all _your_ fault.That’s what you said, isn’t it? _Isn’t it?_ ”He pushes him bodily against the cold bricks, and Sherlock goes limp, allowing it. _If John wishes to exact his revenge, so be it.I’ve earned it._

Sherlock stares back at him, unflinching.He’d been waiting for this.If he’s honest with himself, he thought it would have come sooner.He thought it would come in the months John went to a dermatologist for treatments when his scar tissue prevented him from sleeping on his back, or one of the nights John had awakened screaming as if his skin were being seared at that very moment or when he stopped frequenting his gym so he wouldn’t have to answer any questions.He’d always known that John would ultimately arrive at this conclusion, just as Sherlock himself had years before and welcomed in the crippling guilt that had become his constant companion.

It had always been inevitable that John would blame him.

And hate him.

And leave him.

John’s red face is inches from his, lips flattened as they become only when fury dissolves them into thin, deadly lines.“You’re supposed to be a genius, Sherlock, aren’t you?But you say the stupidest fucking things I’ve ever heard.You think I’d have been better off not going to Prague, not meeting Cyril and his gang of merry psychos?Huh?”He breathes heavily through his nose, eyes probing Sherlock’s face like punches of a fist.“Fine, ok, so what if I’d stayed home, then?What if I’d said no and told Mycroft to go fuck himself?That would’ve been _smashing_ , wouldn’t it?Watching you get shot in the head or thrown from the roof of a building?Yeah, and what then?Tell me, really, _what the fuck would I do then?"_  

He shoves his fists onto his hips and presses his chest into Sherlock’s, flecks of spit prickling Sherlock’s chin as he grinds out his words.“You think I rub salve on my skin every morning and get _angry_?” He crackles out a harsh laugh.“That’s the time of day I’m happiest, you stupid shit.”

Sherlock’s hands, flat against the wall behind him, clench into the mortar.His eyebrows pull together slightly. _Hang on, what did he just say?_

“I’m fucking thrilled because that’s all it took—that’s all it took to keep you.I _won_ , don’t you see?I won the fucking lottery because when I put the jar away and walk out of the loo, you’re there.You’re not in pieces on the pavement or six-feet under the ground with half your skull missing—you’re _there_.In the sodding _kitchen_.So, sure, I won’t win any beauty awards, but those scars are like my fucking _trophies_.”

Sherlock presses his head against the bricks.His mouth is ajar, but he can’t breathe. 

John cocks his neck and presses harder against him.“And if you think I get furious when I have a couple of bad dreams, Sherlock, then you’re an absolute _moron_.Know why?Because when I wake up, _you’re there_.I can roll over and grab onto you and sleep like a fucking baby.But you think I’d have been better off with the nightmares of watching you bleed out on the pavement and then wake up all alone, in a world where you don’t exist? _Are you out of your goddamned mind?_ ”

John’s cobalt eyes alone could pin him there indefinitely.Sherlock’s mouth is dry, his brain fighting the vertigo that John’s words have spun.“John…”It’s the only word he can get out, the only word his brain knows for sure.

The plaintive sound makes John’s eyes cloud, and he abruptly deflates.He sags back, folding his head down and covering his face with his hand.“What am I doing?”The hand drops, and when he looks up at Sherlock’s face, he looks tender and broken and Sherlock wants to kiss away every crinkled line on his forehead.“I—Jesus, I’m sorry, Sherlock.I shouldn’t have—“

Sherlock places two long fingers on John’s lips and murmurs, “John Watson, you are a marvel.”

John’s eyes slip closed, and he pulls Sherlock’s hand down and holds it between both of his own, stroking over the soft skin with gentle fingers.“No, Sherlock, I’m not.That’s not me.”Heinhales deeply and gives a hollow chuckle.“And what’s the matter with us?The pair of us, always begging to take the whole world on.We’re tremendous idiots, you know that?”

Sherlock nods.“Agreed.We must alter our focus:every bit of this has been Bajzath and Moriarty. _They_ are the ones who should pay.We have forfeited more than our share, haven’t we?”His face is sober. 

The question strikes a chord deep within John.He winces and scrubs his face with his palm, insisting, “But—but there still should've been something—anything—I could've done to—to—”

“No, John, that’s been our error.Anticipating—that’s all we’ve attempted so far.We’re playing by their rules.Perhaps if we set up the game this time, we'd have a better chance of success."

John gives a wry half-smile.“I see—as with every gamble, the house always wins.”

“Precisely."

John sighs, but his face has relaxed, left hand loose at his side.“Let’s go home.We have work to do.”He motions with his head, and they start down the street in silence.By tacit agreement, they cross toward the tube station.

As they descend the steps, Sherlock shoots John a quick sidelong glance and clears his throat.“I’ll give you one, you know.”

“One of what?”

“A beauty award.”

“Oh, shut up, you.”

“There could be a tiara involved.”

“Stop stealing Mycroft’s belongings.It gives him heartburn.”

An innocent face turns upwards.“And I have it on good authority that you’re a favorite in the evening gown competition.”

“ _Must_ I tickle you, right here, in public?Don’t think I won’t.”

“A smart pair of pumps would do wonders for your calves.”

“You’re insane.”

“Please.You love it and you know it.”

“Yes.”Lips quirk.“Yes, I do.”

 

* * *

 

 

John rounds the corner by the park, smile still lighting his face.After a mere thirty-six hours since his admission, Greg Lestrade had discovered what he considered a Nirvana—an adjustable bed beneath a large television, a skilled staff to tend to his every need, and as much pain medication as he could ever ingest.John had expected to find him taciturn and groaning, desperate to get back to the grind.What he actually found was a man who had loudly proclaimed the north wing at St. Thomas’ Hospital in the top three on his Ultimate Vacations list.

“No phone to answer, no Chief on my arse, and no paperwork to do—what more could a guy ask for, John?Gimme some of them umbreller drinks, and I’ll retire here.”

“Some of _what_ drinks?”

“You know, the ones with the umteller…er, mumfeller?…no, Nutella!That’s it, that’s the one."

“Ah, those are yummy, aren’t they?”John had nodded his complete agreement and carefully adjusted down taps on the inspector’s morphine drip.

When Lestrade had started demanding a sponge bath and a rubber duckie, John took it as his cue to exit. 

His phone buzzes in his pocket as he waits at the crosswalk of a traffic light.“So Gregory is feeling better, is he?”

John snorts.“Hello to you, too, Mycroft.Well, he’s not feeling much at all right now, to be honest.But I suppose that’s a good thing.”

“I’ve an update for you and my brother, though nothing extremely helpful as of yet.Per your suggestion, we’ve started to advertise catering services through the proper channels; a rather sought-after chef of Tuscan cuisine and a rare vintage of Chianti have been key to the pitch, so if you’ve correctly interpreted the information from Ms. Wenceslas, that might prove fruitful.”

“And you’ve included the desserts?Sugar will seal the deal.”

“Of course I have.‘Panna cotta fit for the gods’ should be nigh irresistible.”

“Excellent.”

“Our search of incoming water traffic in the last few months has been fruitless, however.It is possible that his holdings are long term, but that will take some additional time.We have no way of knowing how long it will be until another attempt is made on your life.”He clears his throat delicately.“You could, of course, allow me to take you into protective custody.”

John slaps his thigh and laughs with fake merriment.“Ha ha!That’s a good one, Mycroft! _Very_ funny!And Sherlock says you have no sense of humor.”

“It would ensure your safety,” is the brittle reply.

He turns left down the next street, checking the shop signs in search of a Mediterranean sandwich place he’s certain was in this neighborhood.“Did you ask your brother that question when you called him?”

“No, I did not.”

“Because he hung up on you, didn’t he?”

A withering sigh.“Sherlock has a number of virtues, but phone courtesy is not one of them.”

“He hung up on you.”

“Startling deduction, Doctor.”Dry as tinder.

“Because he thinks it is as ridiculous as I do.We’re not children, you know.I’ve actually been to a war zone, in case you’ve forgotten.”

“Indeed.And how _is_ your shoulder feeling, Doctor?”

“So, do you _want_ me to punch you in the face, or…?”

“Save your strength.You’ll be needing it.”

A car coasts to a stop alongside John, a sleek black Jaguar.He rolls his eyes. “Mycroft, what do you want _now_?If you were just going to pick me up and cart me around, why have you kept me on the phone all this time?I could’ve had my jaw around a shawarma by now.”

Mycroft is silent for a beat.“Dr. Watson, I’m not sure what you mean.”

In front of John, the car door opens.

In his ear, Mycroft’s tone tenses.“I’ve not sent a car for you.”A crisp inhale.“Doctor—John—RUN!”

John feels a crack to the back of his head before darkness descends.


	5. Old Times

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John comes face to face with his nemesis, and Sherlock scrambles to find him.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter gave me fits, so I'd especially love your feedback about the story so far!

The air is warm and thick.Oppressive.John’s head spins, the inky dark spilling into him on all sides.He hears the hiss and shush of water.It caresses a shore he cannot see, pressing its damp fingers toward, pulling its clutching grip to return to a white-capped ocean hovering over, elsewhere, downing a surge that rises in John’s own chest.

Blue.Black outlines of jagged palms.An imprint against purple.Sharp volcanic rock prickles his bared soles.He’s posed, frozen, choking on humid gusts and sprays.The screams from his diaphragm cough out in a silent fog.

He’s here.

Sherlock stands, long and beautiful, a god at the edge of the cliff, eyes trained on an unseen horizon.A slice of light hits him and his naked skin glows.John reaches out.Sherlock does not see him.His dark hair dances in the wind.He strides forward, away from John, profile intent. _Help me, Sherlock!_ Pale toes curl around the rock, expectant.Finally, he turns his head slowly and looks at John.He smiles softly before raising up on the balls of his feet, sweeping his arms up above his head, and curving gracefully over the rim.

_No!_

Falling.

The rock shreds his hands, his knees, peels the skin from his body as he rolls across it.The ocean pulls him in, pulls him down.Water.He sinks away from the white fuzz of the surface.A rope of seaweed encircles his ankles, his thighs.His arms float out around his waist and up around his ears, useless tubes of rubber.His lungs burn, mounting pressure of fire straining the thin cage of his ribs.His chest splits, white heat pouring out of the fissure.He watches it bleed into the water, powerless to stop it.It’s taking him with it, the flow of emptiness.

Out.Away.

_Stop—need—can’t—it’s—_

An echo of giggles.

“Oh, Mr. Doctor, yes!This is fun for me, yes.Many, _many_ thanks.”A sigh.“That will do, Viktor.”

The dark cocoon distends and hurls him out into a dim yellow haze.John sucks in air in wasted, throaty gags, coughing out sprays of thick saliva.His whole body flips up, and his head is shoved forward until his chin hits his sternum and bounces up.Streams run from his eyes and ears and scalp, collecting in pools inside his collar.His chest heaves, the intense flame in his chest shrinking to a pinpoint at the back of his throat.

John’s eyes remain squeezed shut as the burlap bag is ripped from his head and his brain seeps back into his present.He can sense the looming figure behind him, and though mildew hangs heavy in his nostrils from the dank room, he smells the mothball-infused wool of the man’s coat when he bends down to tug on the belted restraints binding John’s wrists to the metal armrests of a reclining chair.When he stands, the man grunts and flicks a leaden finger at the back of John’s head for good measure.

A voice in front of him chuckles, “Oh, Viktor, always such a good boy.You can leave us now.”

Another grunt and some scraping and shuffling on the concrete floor.Then, a squeak as a door is moved in rusty metal hinges.

“I see why the American CIA swears by that practice.Most entertaining!”

John eases his eyes open.A cherubic pink face stares back at him, grin plastered to it, chin resting on the knob of an ebony walking stick.“Hi, Cyril.Long time, no see.”

Bajzath’s forehead glistens.“Yes, Mr. Doctor.Oh, how I have missed you.”

John shifts his legs minutely, testing the bands that hold them tight to the chair, one that could have been taken from any dentist office horror story ever written.“That makes one of us, mate.”The same style of belts surrounds his chest, preventing him from moving more than a couple of inches to either side. 

“But we have so much to catch up on.”

Much like Jim Moriarty, Cyril Bajzath’s appearance is unremarkable.He is diminutive of height, perhaps an inch shorter than John; his drab brown hair is thinning, his cheeks chubby, and his body is covered in an expanding layer of pudge that rounds out the untoned muscles beneath.He looks like the kind of kid who would have been shoved into lockers at school and had his head dunked in a toilet basin and flushed repeatedly by various members of the rugby team.He appears the essence of a chump, a waterboy, a sucker.

The only part of him that denotes danger is his eyes.They are black—not just dark, but black.Flat, lifeless disks, much like those of a great white shark.They harbor no softness, reflect no compassion nor human emotion of any kind.Joy and misery are strangers there.Their owner could slice a victim open with an oyster knife, only to stare with blank monotony and await the inevitable.The eyes would never vary through the begging and shrieking, the oozing of fluid out onto the ground in a thick miasma of death.They would never flicker; they would never close.

John could not once remember ever having seen Cyril blink.

Now, Cyril smiles.“It is good that you are back where you belong.”He hitches up a leg to hold his elbow and leans his chin into his hand.

“I’m flattered.”

“Oh, you should be, Mr. Doctor!You should be most definitely!You have earned my attention.It is not often that a mole deceives me.”

John’s mouth twitches.“Really?You haven’t looked at the skin on your back recently, then.”

Cyril twinkles with studded laughter.“Oh, so clever!”He smoothes a side of his hair.“Tell me, have you looked at yours?”

John’s stomach twists, but his face remains placid.“Not lately,” he replies breezily.“Probably due for a teeth cleaning soon, though.”He glances around at the room.It appears to be an industrial workshop, but for what business he cannot determine.There are clunky, archaic machines on several long tables—presses and a conveyor belt and several which look to be sorters or cutters.On the table next to John’s chair are various implements for carving and trimming—tin snips, loppers, pliers, and a colorful assortment of knives, chisels, and grinders. 

All the makings of his own little shop of horrors.

_Keep him talking_.

“So, how’s your A1C these days?Still shooting for double digits?” He starts to rotate his wrists subtly in their bindings.

“I’m healthy as a horse!”Cyril slaps his belly with a satisfied thunk.

“Seems more you’ve just eaten one.”

“It’s these English pubs, you know.All the fish and the chips.Who can resist it?”

“You’ve never had chips before?”

Cyril waves a stumpy arm.“Alas, it is so, but there is no remedy; give me a crunchy insalata mista and I am most happy.”

John snorts.“Yeah, with a tub of tiramisu.”

“Oh, you know me so well, Mr. Doctor!”

He motions with his head.“I also know that coloring on your legs.I did try to warn you about the edema.”

Cyril puts his fingers over his mouth and chuckles.With the other hand, he lifts his pant leg partially and pivots his toe around, like he is showing off on a runway.“Oh, you know I try to be good, but things have been so busy lately.”He frowns dramatically.“The stress does get to me so.”

“You need a vacation, then.I hear Antarctica is lovely this time of year.”

“No, no,” Cyril wags his finger.“I’ve been away too long.I left too many loose ends.”He stands, the veil of humor leaving his face.“No rest for the weary, they say—isn’t that right, Mr. Doctor?”

John’s stomach slowly lines with ice, but he forces himself to keep up the flip exterior.“Are you ever going to use my name?”Cyril had always referred to him by that ridiculous label.It was no formality nor respect being offered to him, he was well aware; Cyril simply did not think of him as a person.He saw him consistently as a device, no more relevant to him than a bottle of aspirin or a mercury thermometer—a means to an end.

“Your _name_?”

“John.My name is John, remember?”

Cyril claps his hands together below his nose and narrows his eyes, such a sick corruption of the very pose Sherlock’s adopted a thousand times that John has to look away quickly before his bravado shell cracks.“Your name,” he repeats thoughtfully.“Which name should we talk about?I remember the name you gave was John—John Morstan.Was he not the one who entered my home and lived by the grace of my kindness?The one who had a place in my _family_ and shared space with my _son?_ Should we talk about _that_ name?”His hands fall away from his face, and he delivers a succession of punches to the doctor’s face, jerking it back and forth viciously.John coughs out the sour metal taste pooling on his tongue.“That man is dead, I fear.But then I heard the name John _Watson_ , whispered to me by the heavens above, and I just _knew_ I had to meet him.Of course I had to meet the man, the destroyer, that murdered my people and tried to end me.I had to meet him just once before a righteous hand wipes his filth from this world!”Cyril bends over him, breathing deeply through his flat nose.

“I never murdered anyone, and you know it, Cyril,” John says evenly.“ _You_ killed half of your own _people_ and laughed while you did it.Tell me you don’t remember that.”

“I did no such deed.That was sacrifice—painful, necessary sacrifice—and that is all.”

“Tell yourself whatever lies you want.They all died by your hand.”

Bajzath reaches behind him and takes a small glass jar from the workbench.It is filled with a clear liquid and an oddly shaped object.“This guppie did.”He holds the jar over John’s chest and shakes it like a snow globe.“Hartman Peters was not a very loyal subject in Her Majesty’s employ.Not really a loss to the service, I’d say.But I thought he might want to see you pay for your crimes as much as I.I promised him.”

As the liquid settles, John realizes that the jar holds a human eye, still connected to its optic nerve.

“Mr. Peters tried to deny he was a spy, that he had worked his treachery on me.”Bajzath sticks out his bottom lip like a pouting child.“We had a bit of a disagreement.”He holds the jar up to his temple and pets it.“But now we see eye to eye!”He cackles, head tossed backward, belly jiggling.

John curls his toes into knots, his intestines roiling.“Hilarious,” he grinds out.“I’ve heard all the truly pathetic serial killers take souvenirs.Guess it’s true.”

Bajzath places the jar back on the table and sighs, ignoring him.“And all along, I had looked for you, Mr. Doctor.”Without warning, his hand closes around John’s throat and squeezes.“The whole time.Only for you,” he murmurs, stale breath puffing on John’s cheek.

He tries not to move.Cyril always got a charge out of the begging and thrashing his victims gave him, a sick excitement filling him as the distress around him grew in extravagance.As the pressure increases, John stares at the network of pipes above him, counting slowly in his head to skirt the panic and keep himself from gasping loudly.He trembles involuntarily, vision starting to blacken, clouding the outline of Cyril’s blank face.Distantly, he can hear himself gurgling, but before he goes under completely, Bajzath releases his grip.

John hacks and gags, writhing helplessly as he fights against nothing for air and tries to bring himself back.Cyril turns to fiddle with his instruments on the table.When his panting eases, John swallows hard and takes a chance.“I always knew that you were a bloodthirsty bastard, Cyril, but I never took you for a fool.Jim Moriarty used you like a two-dollar whore, and you fell for it.And he’s using you all over again, and you’re just skipping along to his tune.Don’t you get tired of being his patsy?”

“Moriarty is a genius.He has…enlightened me.He turns a spark into a flame!”

“No, you twat, he sent you to do his dirty work.”

Bajzath stands erect and pulls a cloth from his back pocket to dab at his glistening forehead.“Ah, now I see.”He wipes his nose and stuffs the cloth away.“You wish to discuss another name:Sherlock Holmes.”

The ice in John’s stomach reaches out and grabs his heart.“Who?”

Bajzath chuckles.“Moriarty likes him.”A fat tongue laps at chapped lips.“He likes him a lot.”

“I don’t care.”

“Sure you do, Mr. Doctor,” he coos, making the hair of John’s scalp tingle with revulsion.He clenches his fists tightly so that his face remains impassive.“Moriarty told me all about the detective and his special pet, his own little lapdog to keep the tom cats away.”He giggles.“He said Mr. Holmes would not soil himself to rub _your_ little belly, but that wouldn’t stop you from trying to hump The Virgin’s pretty leg.”He places three fingers over his lips and shakes his head, as if delightfully scandalized.

John rolls his eyes and looks away, hoping to hell he looks bored, hoping more that Cyril isn’t.When that happens, he will start in on John in earnest and the snippets of abuse will morph into something extended that John knows well will end in agonizing fashion.His treacherous mind dredges up an image: a driver Bajzath had once stretched out naked on a slab of concrete before carving the skin from his limbs and forcing him to scrape them back and forth in the gravel to create a ‘blood angel’ in the design a child would make in fresh snow.As a final touch, he sliced off individual fingers and toes to position them just so as adornments to his pretty new artwork. 

It took the driver three hours to die, and he was conscious until the very end.It had been John’s job to make sure of it.The terrible pleading in that man’s eyes, the silent begging for the doctor to have mercy, to kill him and release him from the torment, will haunt John for eternity.

“Worry not, Mr. Doctor.I will decide if Jim deserves to have Mr. Holmes or not, after what’s happened to me.I think perhaps I deserve some compensation for the trouble I’ve endured.”

When John wrenches his neck back toward Cyril, he knows his wait is over.It’s like he’s been on a slow climb to the top of a hill of the rollercoaster; this is that moment of weightlessness, when he can look out and see the skyline and know with absolute certainty that he is about to hit the ground hard and fast. 

The lunatic has donned a head strap with a small reflector and positioned himself on a swiveling stool.“Now, then.I must return your service to me.I will tend to your needs as you did to mine.”

“Not necessary.”

“It is,” Bajzath hisses before rolling towards him like an uncoiling snake.“You say you need a dentist, Mr. Doctor?Let me help you.”He leans up and wedges John’s head against his chest.Aloft appear the long metal spines of a pair of forceps as two fingers shove into the corner of John’s mouth.

“Wait!”John chokes out.

Cyril pulls back slightly.His dead eyes stare, unblinking.“Something to say, dog?”

“Yes…yes…”

John sucks in a breath.The sweaty face hawks closer, triumph playing in the fattened curves.

A bronze figure poised on a cliff, smiling.

Weightless at the horizon.

_And I said ‘danger’ and here you are._

“Be a sport and start with the ones in the back.”

The captain winks and settles back,  commanding gravity take him over the edge.

 

* * *

 

The glass is cracked.

Sherlock runs his thumbs over the threads of fissure on the mobile’s face, pressing his fingers into the back.It still feels slightly warm, as if it stores the last bit of heat from John’s body, extracted and left for Sherlock on the sidewalk when John was swallowed into the void.

_A consolation prize_.

He places the item carefully on the tabletop in front of him and hunches over it, fingers gripping painfully into his temples, holding his head up.He stares down at the black rectangle as if he’s waiting for it to ring.It remains lifeless.All he sees is the broken reflection of his own face.

He grits his teeth and palms the device, sliding it into his trouser pocket.He pushes it against his thigh to feel its heat and to mingle it with his own.

John’s phone had been found on the street corner where he was taken, one in an isolated bubble conveniently outside of the scope of CCTV.With no remote images and no witnesses, there were no immediate leads on his attackers or the car. 

When his own phone had buzzed two hours earlier with a text alert, Sherlock had lifted it to his face and read Mycroft’s name and his clipped message, _Coming to Baker Street now_ , and he had immediately felt a chill in his blood.Mycroft never texts if he can call; what’s more, he certainly never announces his visits, for the obvious reason that Sherlock would barricade the door and disappear into the city to avoid him.Thus, nothing but an apocalypse could motivate such an action.

Sherlock’s nervous system had gone into overdrive.He had paced frantically in front of his wall-sized puzzle, mind picking through every moment of the morning.Looking back, he’d had an odd feeling glimpsing John don his coat to go check on Greg, the scrape on his cheek a dark maroon against his paled skin.John was clearly tired and in some pain after the attack, and they’d spent the night strategizing their ploy to pull Bajzath out of hiding, to use his own weakness and vanity against him.Bajzath, taking his cues from Moriarty, would no doubt believe himself untouchable, and if he did not fear the law, they deduced what one such as him would extend himself to do, like plan for luxuries of the Dionysian variety, one of the few lusts which compelled the man to any significant degree.

Sherlock had already busied himself flipping through inquiries that had been pouring in for their ploy.Mycroft’s people had given it just the enticements that wealthy figures attuned to moving in darkened circles far above the din of the ignorant masses would cue into immediately.When status is everything and exclusivity a must, one's desires become amazingly predictable.

John had stood behind him for a few minutes, reading through some of the items on the screen.“You could come with me.Get a bit of lunch after.We should recharge, you know.”

Sherlock hadn’t moved.“Not hungry,” he muttered, clicking the keys of the laptop in a stuttered flurry.

He had felt a squeeze on his shoulder, then a quiet, “Goodbye, Sherlock.”

Sherlock had paused then.There had just been something about the tone, an undefinable dissonance that made him twist in his chair and look the doctor up and down. 

John had given him a weary smile.“Back in a few hours, then.”

Sherlock had nodded and watched John head for the door.“John?”

The doctor had paused and turned back, eyebrows raised.Sherlock had opened his mouth, but snapped it shut, unsure what he really wanted to say.“See you soon,” he finally stammered, feeling a bit ridiculous.He did despise stating the obvious, did he not?

And John had crinkled his eyebrows slightly, bemused expression turning fond, before he disappeared down the stairs.

When Mycroft arrived, he gave Sherlock classified data from the SIS, thrusting the brown envelope toward him with a tight expression.If he didn’t know better, he’d think Mycroft appeared perturbed, perhaps even worried, and it had been a very long time since Sherlock had seen that expression on his brother’s bland face.The last time was twenty-three years before in a hospital near their parents’ home.It had been the night Sherlock flatlined with his first overdose, brought back from the brink by the persistent efforts of the medical staff, which had been close to giving up and calling his time of death.When he’d cracked his eyes open the next day and was able to focus his vision enough to recognize the face of the hunched figure next to his bed,he knew immediately how close he’d come to dying.

The envelope contains a compilation of known acquisitions from various dummy corporations that have been allegedly linked to James Moriarty.Since it was their operating hypothesis that Moriarty put Bajzath onto them in London, it seemed reasonable to assume that Bajzath would make use of some of these properties while here, as acquisitions of that network of which he’d been such a dominant part.There are ones that had been buried deep that Moriarty himself probably doesn’t even know they’re on to, but whether he allows Bajzath access to these can only be determined by whether or not Moriarty has decided to part ways with his associate; if he doesn’t care about using Bajzath in the future, he’ll push him to the lesser buried properties first.

Mycroft drifts down the hallway away from him, mumbling on his mobile words Sherlock cannot distinguish.Sherlock stands and moves closer to the spot on the wall reserved for a map of the city that he’s dotted with pins to demarcate some of the unexplained phenomena he’s been tracking.His eyes trace the curves of the river, ticking off each note, resetting and scanning his internal drive. _No.Not you.Not you.Nor you._

Finally, he pauses and squints at one spot, the location of the water main break that had closed off a road, the west end of the Wapping High Street.   It’s an industrial area, spotted with abandoned properties being sought out for renovation, a rejuvenation of the waterfront in that area.

Suddenly, his eyes fly open. _Oh!_ He dives at the table for the list from Mycroft and scans it hastily until he falls on one name near Wapping Pier: Red Lion Millworks. 

In his mind echoes Ms. Wenceslas: _He has the heart of a lion, and when he roars, rivers run red_.

Sherlock snatches John’s gun from the desk drawer and is gone without a word. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I have no direct knowledge of actual neighborhoods or renovations near the Thames. I'm operating in fiction only!


	6. Fallen

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock discovers where John is being held, but an escape does not go according to plan.

The building faces the water, as if turning its back on the city and curling into itself.The seven floors of brick hunch against the skyline, crumbling slowly in a battle of wills with the elements, remaining glass in the upper floors gone cloudy with grime and age.Ugly vegetation has reclaimed the knots and pits in the surrounding asphalt to suggest the property was last a useful contributor to the local economy in the late 1990s and has since faded, crumbled in its spot, too stubborn to fall to the ground and allow something worthwhile to take its place.

Sherlock approaches from the east where he is partially concealed by a concrete barrier that runs along the rocky shoreline.The wind presses him down against it and creates a hollow whistle as it smacks into it and unfurls along its surface.Gusts blast him, rendering him breathless as the air forces into his nostrils, and he grimly insists that is the only factor in his tight throat and watering eyes, nature’s warfare against his senses.It has nothing to do with what he’s let happen.Nothing to do with what might be on the other side of these walls.

Because it can’t possibly be that he allowed John Watson to go out into the city alone after one attempt had already been made on his life, one unambiguous swipe of the dragon’s claws directly in front of Sherlock’s face.Surely not.And it can’t possibly be that he allowed John Watson to drift through the doorway of their flat once again without saying to him a single thing of consequence, without telling him anything of the truth that he desperately needs to know.

It can’t possibly be that when John had said goodbye to him that morning it had sounded heavy and permanent.Final.And Sherlock had felt it in his bones, through the very pores of his skin, but he had ignored that instinct as superstition, as needless drama, when it surely was clinical focus that they really needed at that moment.

Solve it.

Solve the puzzle and find the prize.

A whole life constructed from nothing—that’s how Sherlock had defined himself for so long.He’d manufactured his own career, formulated his own image, for the public and for himself.The Consulting Detective became his identity.He worked hard to make it that way, so much so that he nearly lost himself in it.Few had ever cared to distinguish between Sherlock and his title, and there were many long years and lonely nights that he prayed for a way to blur the lines completely, to disappear into The Consulting Detective and leave the man behind.‘Sherlock’ is messy and slow, saddled by dreadful human emotion, cowed and mortified by his inadequacies, a boat against the current.But The Consulting Detective is shrewd and cunning; The Consulting Detective, unadulterated, hovers above to see every move before it’s made and win the game before his adversaries can even see what they’re playing. 

And that’s a good thing, isn’t it?That’s what he’s known, after all, that this is his best role, what he’s codified and branded, the cocoon that turned him from worm to butterfly.The detachment that he’s been craving, the tuning out that allows for his absorption in the facts at hand—that’s what they had to do, right?That’s how they had uncovered plots and solved murders for years; that’s how they had rousted serial killers and made themselves renown in investigative circles.

And that is how they would defeat Bajzath.This.Only this goal.Find the target, beat the target.

Solve it.

What was more important than that?

Sherlock stumbles and has to reach out a gloved hand for support when an unexpected throb of his heart ripples through his chest, providing the immediate and unequivocal answer to his question.

_John._

All along, it’s been Sherlock who could solve the murder.But it’s been John Watson who would save the life _._

And John’s done just that, repeatedly, while Sherlock’s floundered on the sidelines, terrified and worthless, every tactic failing to produce results.While John’s gone about the business of saving all of their lives, it’s as if Sherlock’s waited for something, anything—that murder to solve—to check himself back into the game.

But murder in this case is unfathomable.Murder in _this_ case would rescind the second chance they were gifted, Sherlock’s one and only chance for true happiness.It would fill his chest cavity with concrete.It would collapse his whole world in bitterness and fire.

Waiting for a murder for The Consulting Detective to solve is not an option.In this case, there was nothing more important for _Sherlock_ than saving a life, the one life upon which everything else depends.

As he reaches the end of the barrier, he angles his head around its cobbled edge.The Red Lion building opens a large cargo bay to the right of its regular delivery entrance.There is a long black vehicle parked there, angled toward a service entrance, which hangs open to the interior of the building.Other than that, it appears deserted.

Sherlock tracks up to the complex, moving silently through the grey light.He falls into the vehicle, placing it between him and the building.He reaches up a cautious hand to the bonnet, and its scarce remnants of warmth tell him it has been here for approximately four hours, within the time frame to have snatched John.He slides down the door and tilts his head up to peer into the interior.It is empty.

A clang of metal snaps Sherlock’s head up.

He eases his way to the tail of the vehicle and slinks up to the wall of the building next to the open door.He presses himself into the rough brick before flicking his head around to the metal jamb of the entryway.When no bullets fly, he crouches and rolls inside.

He lands in the corner of an expansive shop floor, littered randomly with paper and debris.The west wall is lined with vacant offices and specialty shops, subtle shadows falling in geometric patterns through unseen windows of fractured glass and warped plywood boards.Stories above him around the canopy of the ceiling clang a network various chains and pulleys partially restraining pieces of a former electricians walkway, oversized iron hooks moored to the side walls which dangle precariously above all on rusty rivets.

Roughly ten meters from him is a black square.

It’s a man’s wallet.

It is free of dust, a new arrival.He squints at it for a moment, then gasps, rushing over to scoop it up.He’d bought it for John their first Christmas at Baker Street. He turns over the smooth leather in his fingertips just as John had that day, surprise and gratitude gleaming in the deep blue of his eyes.Sherlock had downplayed the gesture, mumbling about how John had lost his to the Thames a few cases before so he was merely fulfilling a practical requirement, but John’s features had stayed as soft as the “Thank you,” he’d breathed through his lips.

Sherlock had ached to kiss him even then.

He flips it open and surveys the contents, which look intact.Suddenly, his brows crinkle, and he bends his pinkie into a fold beneath the row of various plastic cards and fishes out a curious slip of paper peeking out from behind.He would’ve sworn that he’d successfully cataloged every item that John carried with him.When he flattens the folded crease, he almost drops the whole wallet.

It is the fortune from a cookie they’d had during their first real meal together. _Now your life will never be the same_.Sherlock vaguely recalls that he had railed on the items as one of the few worthwhile American exports since Ben Franklin, though the latter would cringe at the quality of the aphorisms—or try to steal them—and perhaps went on to suggest that Hallmark cards were some sort of Freemason conspiracy to dumb down an already deplorable public.Really, Sherlock could scarcely remember what he said because the more he’d rambled, the more John had giggled, and the sound was immediately addicting, so he’d kept right on until the two of them were so rambunctious that they’d gotten a rather stern reprimand in Mandarin from the restaurant’s owner.After all of these years, Sherlock had never known that John had kept it.

John’s giggle echoes faintly around him.

Sherlock freezes. _Was that real?_  

He holds his breath and waits.

There’s a sound of metal tinkling, as if something had been dropped. 

Then, there’s another giggle, followed by a wet thud, a bludgeoning of flesh with a heavy object.

_Second hallway to the left, thirty meters down._

The next sound Sherlock hears is a gun cocking against his right temple.

 

* * *

  

The sound of panting filled his ear.“Szar,” came the exasperated mumble.

John twists to spit another mouthful of blood over his shoulder so that he could tilt his head back and laugh.

“What’s the matter, Cyril?”

There’s a loud clatter as Bajzath throws the tongs down on the workbench and slaps at himself with his handkerchief to wipe the runs of perspiration from his face and neck.John’s knowledge of anatomy told him that Cyril’s little plan of prying his teeth from his skull had its flaws.Sure, it would be agonizing, but the fat little shit obviously underestimated the force required to separate healthy adult molars from one’s maxilla and mandible.After twenty minutes of struggle, he’d only succeeded in removing one and marring up the enamel on another.

“Taking a break?” John giggles.“That’s cool.Go have a cookie.I’ll wait.”

A whir of movement erupts in the corner of his eye.“Cseszd meg!”The knob of the ebony walking stick connects with John’s cheekbone.Cyril’s face appears, scarlet and shining.He holds the stick in both hands above his head.“Te rohadék!” he hisses and loses control.He rails on John, a blind fury of blows hitting his forehead, sternum, stomach, and thighs.

Behind John’s field of vision, the door creaks open.

Bajzath whips around and freezes.

John writhes slowly, keeping his pain as low-key as possible, waiting for the intense arc of it to pass before trying to speak again.“Pizza delivery here already?Great,” he grits out, shakier than he’d have liked.He coughs and lets it devolve into a tight chuckle.“Hope you got it with mushrooms.”

His blood chills when Cyril’s face splits in a broad smile.The dead eyes turn to John.“Mr. Doctor, Viktor has brought me a present.”

“Is it your Tickle Me Elmo doll?Bet you’ve missed him bunches.”

Viktor grunts and kicks the newcomer out into the middle of the room. 

John is not able to keep the panic from his face when Sherlock stumbles into view at the foot of the chair.Despite every terrible thing that has happened to him in the last few hours, he’s never felt anything close to this jolt of paralyzing fear.Their eyes meet for no more than a couple of seconds, and though his face is set like stone, it is enough for John to see Sherlock’s internal mixture of relief and horror.John looks away quickly, fighting to keep his breathing under control.

Cyril smells it on him, the fear that seeps fresh out of John’s pores.He circles around Sherlock, looking him up and down slowly, like a butcher deciding where to cut, then saunters back to the head of John’s chair.“He’s a prize, this one.”Cyril licks his lips and leans against John’s ear.“Such a very handsome boy.”

John jerks his head away and keeps his eyes down.His wrists and ankles pull tight against their bindings.

Bajzath lays his hands behind his back.“I am most delighted that Moriarty’s pet has joined us.It’s a party now, yes?”

“Sure you’re ready for another one, Mr. Bajzath?”Sherlock’s baritone fills the room with its characteristic bored derision.

“Another?”

Sherlock flaps a hand.“Though, your son’s not likely to attend this one, which is really for the best; while I might also enjoy a good circus trapeze act as much as he apparently does, I simply _detest_ balloon animals, and if confronted with an entire floating zoo of them, I’d bring a stick pin.”He shoots a cynical gaze at Cyril.“Tell me, was the trip to England part of his birthday gift as well?”

John’s head snaps up, gaze flicking back and forth between them.

“What do you think you know of my boy?”Cyril’s tone is brittle.

“Enough.”A shrug.“All I care to.”

“A pretty mouth indeed, but it speaks such filthy lies.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes and sighs.“I know he’s infatuated with Winnie the Pooh and books that feature that flat fellow who travels the world, so he’s insisted you repeatedly raid the bookstore on Chelsea Street to satisfy him.I know he’s regrettably inherited your appalling obsession with pastries, though you’d be wise to break him of his cruller obsession before he becomes an unsightly ball of butter, too.”

For a moment, Bajzath is motionless, and John is afraid he’s going to leap at Sherlock’s throat, but before John can devise a proper distraction, Cyril starts to chuckle, holding his belly like a deranged Santa Claus.“James told me!Oh, he told me how wonderfully clever you are!”

Sherlock taps his lip with his index finger.“Hmmm…yes…now that you mention it, I do have to wonder how that child would react to knowing his father is a mediocre sycophant who licks the ass of James Moriarty and thinks the shit on his tongue is cream.”

Cyril takes up his ebony stick at the same moment that Viktor steps forward and throws Sherlock against the wall, pressing the tip of his gun under his chin.

“No!”

John’s face is hot.He can feel Bajzath’s dead eyes on him, but he can’t look away from Sherlock’s face.“Problem you have, Mr. Doctor?”Cyril lunges at him, clamping his face in one hand and wrenching his head over to force John’s eyes to him.“Worried your owner might die, dog?Worried that his brains will decorate that wall while yours rot in your head?”He glances back at Sherlock, then leans closer to John and squeezes tighter.“We can’t have that, can we?”

He throws John’s head away and slams his temple with the heavy end of his stick.

 

* * *

 

John is…walking?

No, tripping.The toe of his shoe bumps a heavy object.

It’s _dragging_ —his legs are dragging, useless and numb.

He groans and blinks unfocused eyes as his hands are thrust upward, and his forearms come to rest against cold metal.There’s a slow, grinding clang, and John’s arms are pulled taut.He winces as his wrists are compressed, and abruptly, the bite against them sharpens as he is pulled out into the air.

Instinctively his legs flail, desperate for footing, but the motion cranks his joints and he cries out.

“Be as still as possible, John.”

“Sherlock, what—“

“There!That’s better!”Cyril’s mocking voice echoes around them.

The gentle slope of the building’s roof is no more than five meters above them, and the cold concrete of the shop floor is forty meters below.John gasps and fights to readjust his wrists, which are bound together and slung over one of the industrial hooks that remain amongst the pulleys and ductwork that were left here.He tilts his head back and sees Sherlock dangling nearby in a similar state.There’s a cut above his eye where the butt of Viktor’s gun must’ve knocked him out after John went under.

“Now you will have time to say your goodbyes, yeah?I have been always a romantic, yes, Mr. Doctor?”

“You’ve always been a fucking rat bastard!”

“Really, Mr. Nicolacakis, your Papa would be _so_ disappointed in you,”Sherlock adds, his voice the very essence of disaffected scorn.“Good on him for ridding his life of that mewling sack of flesh all those years ago.”

“It is good that James is no longer able to witness this.It would've saddened him.”There’s a dramatic sigh.“I must leave you, alas, all forgive.Time to fly and for nature to take its course.Viktor?”There is a weighty clunk and a brief tremor as the pulley is locked in place.“Gentlemen, adieu.”

Their footfalls fade, and a few minutes later, they hear the muted concussions of doors slamming and a car engine revving to life.

They are alone.

Sherlock clears his throat.“Well, just look at us, John.‘Hanging by a moment,’ aren’t we?”

John barks a laugh.“Really?Now?”He remembers that night well—their silly banter of song titles, followed by the dizzying consumption that results when he is lost in the cyclone of Sherlock Holmes. _Heaven_.“Next you’ll say we’re going out in a blaze of glory.”

He grunts, trying to adjust his hands against the hook.“I was going for something in the ‘dancing out in space’ department.”

John bites his lip and nods.He is unable to stifle the hiss when he wrenches and twists to see him better.His shoulder screams.

Somewhere below them, water drips.The metal roof of the building creaks in the wind.John strains to try to make out sirens or shouts in the distance, some sign that help is arriving, that they’d be saved.Instead, he hears the scrape of the rough burlap rope around his wrists as his hands slip another millimeter through the loop.

“Do you think Mycroft will—“

“John.”

The doctor flinches.Sherlock’s voice is too sober, too deliberate.Too much like resignation.“No.No, Sherlock, don’t.I can’t—we need to figure out a way —“ 

Sherlock’s eyes are so soft, and he stares at John’s face as if he’s trying to memorize it. 

Then, John gasps. _Oh, God_. _I see it._

At that moment, John sees all of him—the real Sherlock, the man who only appears briefly, when they are safe and tangled with one another in their bed, when the protection of their rooms and the safety of John’s arms allow his heart to reveal itself, full and throbbing, on the surface.Those times are so rare.Gifts, miracles seen only by John’s eyes that he treasures in ways he could never have imagined, stores them whole in his heart to let them keep it beating when the rest of him has no reason to continue.

John gets it; he really does.Sherlock has so carefully constructed his persona, the one that people see and believe—the jerk, the sociopath, the _machine_ —that letting it drop is a vulnerability he can scarcely endure.It is his exoskeleton; without it, his real self would ooze out into a puddle on the pavement for others to step through and soil and splash around in for kicks.He peeks around the facade regularly, far more now than when John first knew him, letting his compassion and his humor and his appreciation live in the external world more than John ever thought he would.

After years in the shadows, he’s watched as Sherlock’s allowed himself the danger inherent in becoming someone’s colleague, in becoming a friend, a partner, a lover.But so rare are the times when his precious heart lets itself be known to the outside world—that tender, sweet, wholly loving man that lives behind the mask of cold, unfettered reason—pure and hopeful as a child untouched by a world’s cruelties he should never have to face.It always takes John’s breath away and soaks him with a rabid need to wrap the man up and protect him, to love him harder (as if that were actually possible).

He lets John see him now, forcing down the perpetual defenses.Sherlock’s face is open, his eyes crystalline.His lips tremble.“John.”

John’s eyes swell.“Sherlock, stop.Stop it now.”

“Listen to me, John!Please!”His voice, his face, plaintive and wretchedly calm.

John’s eyes automatically fill with tears.

Sherlock’s head shakes faintly, a combination of shock and pleading pulling his eyes wide.“I could not possibly love you more than I do.Mathematically, I mean.It is not _possible_ to exceed 100%, obviously, but that’s not enough—God, how do I say this right?—I could never love another living thing more than I have loved you.I was with you every day, and I never told you.I should have said it.I thought it every second and never said anything.And then you were gone, and I—I hated myself because I’d _had you there_ and didn’t see what I should have, didn’t tell you what you deserved to know.I don’t know how to—I can’t make up for that.I never knew that this was possible.And I find my words utterly worthless to—to tell you really—John, you—“

John bites his bottom lip to balance the pain in his chest.

“—you came back, you actually _came back_ to me, and I’m a fool, a classic _fool_ , because you are it, John.You have to have everything because you _are_ everything.Am I making myself plain enough to you, John Watson?”

“Sherlock.”He can’t help it now.A bubble of tears has created a glistening line down his cheek.“I do know.”He tries to inhale and it’s cut with a choking sob.“I _know_.”He inhales audibly and compresses lips, squeezes his eyes shut.“This is not over, Sherlock Holmes.Come on, you’re the smartest man I’ve ever known.Figure it out!Get us out of this.There has to be a way.”

“Of course there is, John.”

Abruptly, Sherlock begins to crank his body like a pendulum, swinging up and back with increasing force, hands gripping with whitened knuckles in an effort to hold on.

John gasps, scrambling his fingers around the expanding loop of rope.“Sherlock!Sherlock, what are you—I can’t—I—I’m going to—“

John’s right hand slips free.All that holds him now are the tips of three fingers on his left.

Two.

One.

As his last finger is freed, John’s brain fogs.He knows he’s falling, but he feels lost in a time warp, just as he had when he’d been shot in Afghanistan.His pitch forward into the dust had taken barely a second, but his mind played the reel as a smooth glide downwards, like sinking into a warm bath.Then, he’d been sure he was dead.He’d seen the light so many had spoken of, felt an encompassing placidity as he was conducted to another dimension that his scorn had told him was merely new-age tripe in which soldiers like he could never afford to indulge.Then he’d awakened in triage, flashlight flicking past his pupils, shadowy face calling his name:“Captain Watson, can you hear me?You’ve been shot.You’re in hospital.Captain?Captain, you’re—“

“All right?”

John gasps and chokes, clutching reflexively at his sides, fingers curling around interlacing metal rungs.His vision slowly returns, shapes forming through the haze.Sherlock crouches in front of him, holding tightly to the narrow walkway that’s miraculously fallen beneath them.Sherlock reads his thoughts and shrugs.“I saw the raised platform and the dangling pull-chain.When I calculated the geometry in my head, I determined I could reach it.”

Breath still won’t come to him.John’s chest heaves.His watery eyes are glued to Sherlock, whose eyes have expanded and brow has creased with worry.The dirty windows behind him are bright with late-day sun, giving him a halo of light around his fuzzy crown of curls. _My angel.My unfallen angel_. 

Immediately he wants to laugh, to cry, to scream aloud.They are alive. _Sherlock_ is alive.

Sherlock pats his ankle, grin flashing.“Come on, John!There’s a ‘fucking rat bastard’ out there, and I know exactly what he’s going to do!”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope my use of Hungarian curse words is reasonably accurate; I've come by them third-hand!
> 
> The night of song title banter is shown in "Heart Songs," the fifth installment of this series.  
> Sherlock's inner turmoil during John's absence is featured in "Thief," the third installment of this series.
> 
> John's time-warp feeling when he thought he was dead I based on my personal experience. I've never been shot, but I nearly died eight years ago when I had an infection in my epiglottis; as it swelled, it was covering my trachea and slowly suffocating me. I had been told I simply had strep throat, so by the time I knew something was REALLY wrong and got to the emergency room, I was near collapse. I distinctly remember sitting in the waiting room and looking at the tile floor, thinking, "I'm going to fall. I'm going to fall, and there's nothing I can do about it."  
> The ER doctors took me back immediately (ahead of potential heart attack victims complaining of chest pains), and I was in and out of consciousness; by the time I was fully awake, I thought that only a few minutes had passed, but my family told me it had been hours.


	7. Givers and Takers

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John and Sherlock catch up with their prey, but bullets are not the only things they have to fear.

“Sherlock, wait!”

John’s cry is lost to the butt of the gun shattering the car’s window.His head swivels around in a panic, but the street is deserted.Even the city’s noises are hushed within this lonely funnel of crumbled asphalt.

The dark head flips his way.“There’s no time, and we can’t risk a cab.” White teeth flash.“We’ll give it back.Eventually.”

John drops down into the passenger’s seat as Sherlock fits together the wires he’s tugged from beneath the steering column.The car splutters to life, and they jerk away from the curb and around the next bend.

Sherlock wrangles the phone from his pocket and clicks a few keys.Almost immediately there’s a buzz of a voice on the other end.“Mycroft, I need—yes—yes, clearly, that’s—” eyes flicker to John, “—uncertain at this time—well, _obviously_ —oh, do shut _up_ , will you?—the dossier of Moriarty’s holdings included a warehouse and hangar east of the city airport.I need that address.Text it to me—no—no, I _won’t_ —for Christ’s sake, he’s bolting, Mycroft!He thinks the job is done—Fine— _Fine_ —Right.”He drops the phone in his lap and cranks the wheel onto the access road of the motorway.

They accelerate through the darkness and sparse traffic, city lights slashing thin, luminous brands against their faces.The wind howls through the hole of jagged glass and makes the whole vehicle whistle and shudder under the strain of its relentless current.Sherlock grips the steering wheel with both hands and fights to keep his attention grimly ahead.John is turned away to the window, silent and immobile, face expressionless.Sherlock notices a twitch of motion in John’s jaw, working around itself, and his breath quickens.The dried blood that cakes the corners of his narrow mouth, the angry lumps on his cheekbone and nose bridge, turn Sherlock’s vision purple.He cannot allow himself to look fully at John, to even consider the inventory of the multiple wounds the doctor’s sustained in the hours he was at the mercy of a madman. 

Not now.

Not yet.

They exit the motorway and slip around a labyrinth of surface streets and access roads until they come to a fence at the extreme eastern tip of the airport, separated by a system of waterways off the river.Sherlock cuts the engine, and they both scramble out to surveil the situation from a distance, on the crest of a low rise just beyond the property.The massive horseshoe opening of the hangar pours light onto the thin curves of the empty runway which skirt it and the large yellow and black directional signs in the grassy inlay.The tower of the airport proper is merely a dot in the amongst the shimmer of the city skyline. No security or maintenance vehicles are posted nearby, except for a large refueling truck hovering just along the eastern wall of the hangar.The tail of the black Jaguar just peeks out of the hangar door, dwarfed by the wide, white surfaces of an airplane tail.

“How did you know he’d be here?” John whispers, fingers clenched in the gaps of the chainlink fence.

“I knew he had to have already sent his boy away, fairly recently.He’d not want the distraction once his little mission began in earnest, and his lack of fear when I mentioned him indicated the boy’s no longer able to be threatened by the likes of me.” Sherlock’s low voice does not lessen its derisive bite.

“But why here?I thought you said he’d come by boat.”

“Pigeons, John.”

“What?”

“There’s been an influx of them at city parks, gotten environmental groups fuming.They had to have come from somewhere, suddenly.This airport regularly disperses pigeons and other birds, but the greater numbers had to have been due to a new presence.An ominous one.”

“We’re here just because of _pigeons_?” John hisses, finally turning to look at Sherlock, wide eyes glinting in the reflected light.

“Of course not.Don’t be an idiot!”Sherlock points at the hangar.“Before he left us to die, Bajzath asked us to forgive him, remember?‘I must leave you, alas, all forgive.’Odd choice of words, yes?Why would he say that?It made no sense as he’s not a shred of interest in emotions of any kind.But then I realized it wasn’t a request—it wasn’t a _word_ at all!Baskerville, John, don’t you see?It was an acronym—a GIV, a Gulfstream IV, a private jet.He left us _for_ his _GIV_!”

“Gulfstream jet,” John echoes faintly, head rolling to the sky.“Holy.Shit.”He breathes a quiet, wondering laugh.“You’re fucking amazing, do you know that?”

Sherlock’s adrenaline surges, and he can’t help himself.He leans over and presses a quick kiss to John’s mouth before reaching up and grasping the lacing metal.“Shall we?”

They scale the fence in a few swift motions and race through the sparse field of grass to the fringes of the building.A steady mechanical hum emanates from the interior, various thumps of motors and a clang of the ventilation ducts.The jet is a sleek giant, gleaming under the lights, occupying a good half of the space in the interior cavity.It’s door lies open, offering its short staircase into the cabin.

An abrupt sound of whistling behind them makes them slip inside and dive behind the broad industrial tool chest on wheels that is situated next to the eastern wall of the hangar.Sherlock pulls John’s gun from his coat pocket and holds up a slender finger.John shakes his head once, expression severe, but Sherlock shrugs minutely and starts to turn back to retrace their steps toward the entrance.

John grabs his forearm in a crushing grip just as legs in grey coveralls and scuffed tan work boots stride past their hiding place, the flat notes of a stray tune still piping away in awkward bursts.The man walks another few meters, then whistles a high-pitched alert.“Hullo there?Hey, Mister!We’re all through, yeah?Be needing anything else?”

Enormous feet in black dress shoes appear, along with an answering grunt in the negative.Viktor.

“Right, I’m off, then.Have a safe flight.”

The coveralls shuffle out and are quickly replaced by another pair of black shoes.Viktor issues another grunt, an apparent order, for the new man stalks away toward the opposite section of the hangar.In a few seconds, the rumble of the refueling truck passes the hangar door and chugs away

John taps Sherlock’s elbow lightly and then points his finger in the direction the new man had taken, then draws it around in an arc.He hooks his thumb himself and draws a similar arc in the opposite direction before bringing both index fingers together in front of at his own chest.He throws a pointed glance at the plane.

Sherlock gives a quick nod and creeps away, crawling to the end of a shelving unit to follow the man’s retreat out of the hangar, moving west around the runway.He is roughly Sherlock’s height and weight.He looks around him lazily, side to side. _Local scum, temporary hire, right-handed._ He notes the tattoos on the back of his neck. _Three-time murderer._ His suit jacket shifts as the man pats his pockets and pulls out a pack of cigarettes, and Sherlock can make out the lines of a gun holster along his back.As the man flicks at his lighter, Sherlock darts toward him; before the guard can exhale his first puff, the detective’s unrelenting arm is hooked around his throat.Sherlock uses his free arm to apply additional leverage, patiently squeezing smooth pressure until the man’s legs buckle and he sinks noiselessly to the tarmac.

He disarms the guard and rips down his suit jacket to bind his arms behind him.The cigarette smolders on the ground where it fell from his lips.Sherlock picks it up and snuffs it on the man’s shoulder.“No littering, asshole.”

He lopes back to the hangar, careful to skirt the edges, but his soft steps stutter when he spies a large lump on the center of the polished concrete floor.Moving closer, he realizes that it is Viktor, face down and still as the grave.A small trickle of red runs from the back of his head, and the hunk of metal next to his left foot shows how he got that way.

“Always the economical one, aren’t you, John?” Sherlock murmurs, mouth twitching up at the corners.

He waits for John to recognize his presence and to abandon his hiding place so that they can attack together whatever personnel have already boarded the plane, per the latter’s signaled plan. Sherlock had anticipated a thin contingent of security; Bajzath’s arrogance would allow him to believe that, with minimal effort, he could either overwhelm or elude any law enforcement that may scent his trail.If he further assumes he and John are dead, then he’s no reason to alter that view, thus making it unlikely that additional guards are lurking in the periphery to pick them off.Still, as Sherlock’s clear eyes scan around the expansive space, object by object, he surprised that he cannot discern where the doctor’s decided to take cover.

He waits, fully expecting at any moment to see John emerge around the other side of the plane’s nose, armed with Viktor’s gun and a delicious grin warming the contours of his face.

He waits.

He is seconds from hissing John’s name aloud when he finally sees movement, but his mind lurches.It can’t be so.He _has_ to be wrong because what he finally sees is the painfully slow motion of John’s legs descending the steps of the plane, one by one.His hands are raised, hovering next to his ears.

Sherlock’s throat closes. 

Cyril Bajzath is a step behind John, driving a gun into the back of his head.

Bajzath is grim, eyes dead and face devoid of emotion, until he sees Sherlock on the opposite side of the hangar and smiles slowly, triumphantly.“You just refuse to die, don’t you, Mr. Holmes?Such very poor manners for an Englishman.”He crushes John’s injured shoulder and shakes him, forcing him to his knees.“This one won’t be making that error.”

“There’s no way out, Mr. Bajzath.”Sherlock’s voice sounds distant, even to him.His gulping fear, his potential devastation, has hollowed out his voice, robbing it of its knife point, its thread of conviction.

Bajzath sneers down at the top of John’s head—the soft and silken strands Sherlock’s dusted with his cheek hundreds of times, kissed blindly in the dark in a desperate fever, inhaled deeply to ground him when the rest of his life is spinning into space—and forces the weapon against the temple that Sherlock’s brushed with his lips a thousand times, prayed to and treasured, whispered his many secrets to when no one else could hear.

“Security Services is almost here.If you kill him, they will have no mercy on you.”To his ears, his own voice manages to sound convincing, both commanding and droll.He takes a calculated step forward.“Nor will I."

Bajzath laughs, a cold and dead sound, one Sherlock could never have imagined in the worst of his nightmares.He cocks the gun.“I don’t believe in mercy.”

_Oh, Christ, no!_

Sherlock’s wild eyes land on John’s face. 

He is smiling. 

His eyes are bright, and his shoulders are relaxed, and he is _smiling_.

Sherlock’s mind is sluggish, drunk with mounting terror. _Why?Why is he smiling?Has he gone_ mad _?_

Without warning, John’s left hand shoots out and grabs Bajzath’s crotch like a vice.The other man cries out and crumples, rolling down the steps past John into a heap on the floor.

John snatches the gun from his grip and quips, “Guess those warts never healed, eh, Cyril?Tragic, that.Especially with the arthritis.”

Bajzath writhes, gripping himself, and growls, “What is that?What arth—“

John shoots him straight through the kneecap.

Through the screams, John clucks, “Oh, that’s going to smart come winter, isn’t it?Awww, now, that’s a bloody shame.How _will_ you manage, what with all the rest of those pesky joint issues?” 

“What—“ 

John cocks his head with a bone-chilling smile and shoots Cyril through the other knee and right shoulder in quick succession.The latter fairly babbles with the pain, and Sherlock turns to watch John’s face.It is alight, all steely determination, an indefinable certitude that only John Watson can manage.

In the last day, John has been captured and bodily tortured for hours.He is exhausted, dehydrated, disoriented.Sherlock can read plainly in the lines of his face that he is, at once, afraid and repulsed and furious beyond reason.But right now, he looks like a god.Sherlock Holmes has never been in awe of anything in his life.He has brushed off the thunderous displays of status and royalty, rolled his eyes at their banality.He has stared death in the face more times than he could count, yawned at the grim phantasm which seemed about to claim his soul.But right now, looking into the complicated and beautiful face of John Watson, Sherlock is awash with as much worship as he is physically capable.

Bajzath rolls onto his back and gives them both a hideous smile, the blood oozing around his teeth.“You—” he splutters, “you enjoy it—your—little victory—while you can.”He coughs, a red spray painting the floor.“Moriarty will get you both in the end.”

Sherlock steps closer.“I thought he wasn’t here anymore, Mr. Bajzath.You implied you’d killed him already—was that merely another of your delusions?”

Cyril smiles, blood oozing across his cheek.“You will burn,” he growls.“The heart burned from you _both!_ ”

“Fuck you, Cyril.”John’s voice is a hoarse whisper.“Fuck. You.”

Then, John shoots Cyril Bajzath through the center of his forehead.

Sherlock comes slowly to John’s side and quietly takes the gun, ejects the magazine, and tosses it to the ground.It skitters across the concrete.In the distance, they hear a mounting roar, the rush of a rapidly approaching caravan of vehicles.Apparently, Mycroft and his minions have finally caught up with them with typical bureaucratic timing.

John’s face is a roiling storm.His eyes are dark, lips white around the edges, chin trembling minutely.His eyes fold down and close, and he breathes deeply, suddenly, as if he’d only just realized his lungs were still able to function.After a moment, he looks up at Sherlock, the ghost of a smirk playing at the corners his lips.

Sherlock’s eyes squeeze shut.“Oh, God.No.Don’t say it.”

“I must.”

“ _Don’t_.” 

Sherlock can hear the impish grin surrounding the words without even bothering to look.“Another one bites the dust.”

 

* * *

 

The ride home should have been exultant.They should be celebrating—cheerful and ebullient, and perhaps, a little cocky.They had taken the beast down, stared into the very throat of Lucifer and lived to tell the tale.Evil had lost.Evil was zipped into a black plastic bag, stuffed into a van, and given a ride back into the heart of London courtesy of Her Majesty’s government, while Sherlock and John were going home to Baker Street.Together.Battered and a mite worse for wear, but together.Alive. 

They had spent the past hour leaning against the wall of the airplane hangar while Mycroft’s people swarmed over the place like worker bees tending to a hive.The Met was not notified, the need for official statements and tiresome questions thereby eliminated, so other than a once-over by a medical contingent, they had been left in peace while the evidence was cataloged, the corpse assessed and tagged, and the flight personnel intercepted and detained.

John had sipped from a bottle of water, cracked his neck and massaged his jaw, closed his eyes to rest a bit, leaning heavily against one of the metal studs.

Sherlock had simmered, quietly observing the proceedings without comment.

Mycroft had looked their way once, back and forth slowly between the two.He’d paused, swallowed.Then, catching Sherlock’s eye, he had raised his eyebrow and turned pointedly away.

When finally they are released and slide into the back of the offered car, John sighs and rubs over his face with a heavy palm.“God, I need a shower,” he chuckles softly, squeezing Sherlock’s hand tightly with the other.

Sherlock’s doesn’t pull his hand away, but it lay unresponsive in John’s grip.He turns to look out the window.He doesn’t answer.

Back at the flat, John takes the stairs two at a time, tossing his coat onto the arm of the sofa and stretching his back in careful increments.“You hungry?Didn’t think I’d be, but I’m fairly certain I could eat my left hand right about now.How about some tea at least?”He descends upon the kitchen cupboards without waiting for a response.

Sherlock closes the door with a quiet click and hangs his coat carefully on the rack.He stands in the middle of the room, hands on his hips, examining the tips of his shoes.

John rips open a box of biscuits and crunches with one side of his mouth while he fills the kettle.“Any of Mrs. Hudson’s meat pie left?I’ll even take that on at this point.You any idea what type of meat that _is_ , by the way?I didn’t have the heart to ask.”

Sherlock turns away and walks to the window, the street lamps glowing gold upon his pale skin.His violin lies in its case next to him.He runs his fingers along its polished face, plucks at one of the strings vaguely with the tip of his index finger.He doesn’t notice when the bustle in the kitchen ceases.

“Something wrong, Sherlock?”

His thumb caresses the bow.“Wrong?”

“Yeah.”

“What could be wrong?”

“I don’t really know, to be quite honest.We’ve just been through utter shit, and you’re _pissed_?Why?” 

“Forget it, John.”

“No, I won’t.  Tell me.”

“I’ve nothing to say.”

“Don’t lie to me.”

That does it.

Sherlock rounds on him, eyes on fire.“Lie to you?Lie to _you_?”He makes it to the kitchen table in three long strides.“I’m not the liar here, John. _I’m_ not the one who made the plan. _I’m_ not the one who specifically _planned_ for us take on the plane together and then charged on there alone. _I’m_ not the one who was nearly got himself shot—after _everything else_ that had happened—because I left _you_ behind for _no_ _fucking reason_!”His skin feels prickly and hot, sweat matting his hair to his neck and forehead.He can hear that he’s panting, but he is unable to force his lungs into an acceptable rhythm.

John stills and goes quiet.He puts his hands on the counter and turns his eyes downward, the line of his shoulders tightening dangerously.

Sherlock grabs at his hair.What is he doing?He wants to jump over the table and gather John into his arms, fold him up and kiss him raw, press him into his chest until his heart beats every pulse for the both of them.

But he just can’t do it.

“How dare you,” he husks.“You and me.You made me believe that it was you and me against the rest of the world—you said that to me _right here_ , but you didn’t mean a word of it, did you?Apparently not.How _dare_ you!”

Finally, John looks up at Sherlock.His face is rigid, drawn, lips a single invisible line.Sherlock knows that look well. _Here we go_.He braces himself for the onslaught.

“I’m sorry,” John says quietly. 

Working up a parry to a thrust that doesn’t come throws Sherlock off balance, and he physically stumbles backward until his spine hits the wall.He realizes he’s trembling uncontrollably.He gulps, arms clutching around his own torso, and in a small voice, he throws back, “D-don’t _do_ that to me!Don’t make me believe you l-love me like that if—when you don’t.And you _don’t_!

John approaches him slowly, expression unreadable.He doesn’t speak until his toes press into the tips of Sherlock’s own.He looks up calmly into Sherlock’s face as it hovers on the edge of his own tornado.“Your right earlobe.”

Another non-sequitur.Sherlock’s head rolls against the wood molding of the door frame, barely able to stay upright.

“My favorite thing about you—it’s your right earlobe.Do you know why?The cartilage of its antitragus pushes out, like it’s trying to look bony and tough, but there’s an adorable freckle directly in its center that ruins that whole illusion.The lobule is silken, delicate, and it’s attached, as if it can’t bear to hang over your shoulder, to just dangle there without even your hair to protect it.It is tender, see—so sensitive that whenever I touch it, you shiver—did you know that?Even when you’re hunched over your microscope and lost inside your head, you _shiver_.Your right earlobe lets me find you anytime I need to.And I absolutely cannot resist tasting it, holding it for a moment against my tongue, if for no other reason than to reassure it that I know its secret, and I’ll keep it safe.It _needs_ me, but that’s only part of it, Sherlock, because what it doesn’t seem to know, no matter how many times I whisper the words into that canal above it, is that _I_ need _it_.I’d never survive without it.”

John waits, hands shoved into his pockets, plainly giving Sherlock time, the time to do what he needs to do—to rip him verbally or punch him in the nose or whatever he feels John has coming to him.

Instead, Sherlock reaches a tentative hand and wraps it around the back of John’s neck.“John…”His voice is splintered and fragile.

John sighs and steps closer, moving between Sherlock’s feet and ankles until their chests touch.Sherlock can feel the deep inhales as his lungs push his own ribs out and John’s back, receding only when John’s lungs expand again, back and forth like a Newton’s cradle, momentum from the other keeping each one alive. 

“Sherlock, I do love you, and I will love you until—“

“Death do us part?” The attempt at a wry tone is overwhelmed by the soft fingers moving in John’s fringe of hair above his collar and the bubbles of tears filling Sherlock’s eyes from the bottom up.

A barked laugh.“No.”

He gurgles, a sharp, choking noise.“But…but John—“

“ _No_ , Sherlock.That’s wrong.”

“John, I—I thought—“

A firm hand bends around his cheek.John breathes in once and holds it.His voice is low, fierce.Undeniable.“I died once, Sherlock.I died, and I missed you horribly every day.Like my skin was being peeled from my body.Every.Day.Death?Fuck Death.Death has nothing to do with how much I love you.Death is meaningless.I love you now, and I will love you as intensely, as completely, in 80 years, even if I only live 60 more.”The other hand closes around, trapping Sherlock’s startled features in between.“Are you listening to me, Sherlock Holmes?”

“Y-yes.Yes, John.”Soft, awed.

“Good, because you are never to forget this ever again.You will remember this moment.You will hear the sound of my voice, whenever you start to think for one _minute_ that you are not every bit of my soul.And you will be ashamed that you ever questioned that.And you will never, _ever_ question us again.Do…you…hear…me?”Cobalt eyes shimmer, fixed on the center of the quicksilver, piercing Sherlock’s corneas and drilling directly into his brain, down through his throat, to his thudding heart. 

“Us, John.”A gulp.“Just us.”

An approving hum, and thin lips ghost up at the corner.“Bloody genius, you are.”

Tonight, as John lays him down on the sheets of their bed and slides deep into his body, Sherlock forgets about the danger, the jealous and greedy world around them that tried and failed so many times to rob them of this—of each other—and focuses on his own world—his _entire_ world gliding in and out of him in slow waves, whispering tenderness and encouragement and adoration, protecting him from the scorch of that life out there, their other life out on the battlefield. Sherlock lets go, lets himself be taken, holding onto the man hovering above him, murmuring his own affections and promises, begging for deeper, harder, closer.

Begging for more.

Begging for forever.

And John is there, gripping him tight, protecting him, eyes never leaving his, caring for him now as he had their first night, as he has every night, as he will for every night to come.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For those of you who have studied the many features of Mr. Cumberbatch, I hope John's detailed description of Sherlock's right ear meets muster :)  
> [The inpiring image:](https://images.search.yahoo.com/yhs/search;_ylt=A0geKV6zLZRa9fAAJgIPxQt.?p=benedict+cumberbatch&fr=yhs-Lkry-SF01&fr2=piv-web&hspart=Lkry&hsimp=yhs-SF01&type=RVMC_80801181#id=92&iurl=https%3A%2F%2Fs-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com%2F736x%2F26%2F7d%2Fcc%2F267dcc22be94570e929c917478d82588.jpg&action=click)  
> I never found a way to work it into the narrative, but in my head, Viktor does not speak because he has no tongue; Bajzath cut it out as a way to insure his loyalty, that he'd never, well, "talk."


	8. Epilogue:  More

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Greg's back at work, and John and Sherlock are just BACK.

Sherlock runs his finger around the rim of the container to ensure that the seal is intact, letting a smirk crawl onto his face.He bends to rummage in one of the lesser used cupboards, the ones where John tosses empty post boxes he thinks he might want later and spare napkins and the box of those bizarre cleaning cloths that are supposed be electrically charged to attract dust to them which Sherlock refuses to let him use.

_It’s_ character _, John._

_It’s filth, Sherlock._

He whips out a crinkled paper bag obtained on their last trip to the grocery store and shoves his fist into it to open it wide.

“What do you think you’re doing?”

Sherlock jumps slightly, his absorption in the final stages of his experiment preventing him from registering that the shower had stopped twelve minutes prior.“Nothing…really,” he mumbles, sliding in front of the plastic container still perched on the counter.He raises his eyebrows and blinks innocently.

John slowly finishes slipping his olive corduroy jacket over his shoulders.“Nothing, huh?”His indigo eyes narrow and swirl around Sherlock’s face, a slow smile flickering at the corners of his mouth.“You ready to go, then?Greg’s party’s at two.Bet he’ll be glad to be back at it, even if he’s tied to the desk.Crutches should be gone in another month.”

“Yeah.Sure.All set.”His long fingers fiddle with the seam of the bag.

“Go ahead, then.”John sweeps his arm generously toward the door.“After you.”

Sherlock’s eyes expand owlishly.“Oh!Oh, I wouldn’t dream of it.Please, after you, Doctor.”He tries an ingratiating smile.

“I’ll carry it for you.”

“You’ll—what do you mean, John?You’ll carry what?

“Whatever that tub of goo is behind you that you think I can’t see and haven’t known you’ve been cooking up for the last half hour.”John steps forward, directly into Sherlock’s space, and presses against him.He’s used the new shower wash that Sherlock had gotten him, and he smells divine.Sherlock knows its a ruse, but when the strong arms wrap around his waist, his eyes automatically fall closed.He feels John’s lips against his neck, a tongue snake around his right earlobe, and he shivers.“Damn sexy git,” is the playful whisper that floats past his cheek.

John pulls back, holding up the container in his hand.“Explain.”

Sherlock rolls his eyes to the ceiling.For approximately 1.5 seconds, he considers concocting some kind of semi-legitimate story having to do with preservation of aquatic samples or rejuvenating shriveled fingertips for printing. _Oh, to hell with it._ He sighs deeply with the annoying realization that his ability to fib to John, even about idiotic things, has basically evaporated like a shallow puddle. 

“John, have you noticed Anderson’s fascination with ghost stories?”

“What?”

“Anderson believes in ghosts.Five months ago on the Danbury case, he swore that the safe had been opened by the spirit of the man’s dead mother.Do you remember that?”

The blonde head tilts slightly.“I think he’s got a Ouija board, too.So what?”

“So it occurred to me, based on that presentation of behavior, how easy it would be to…I don’t know, to help that theory of his along, to _massage_ it a bit, and…and that given the proper stimulus, something tangible, it might, well… ”Sherlock glances down at John, places his spread fingers against his own skull, then straightens them abruptly and pulls them away, puffing his cheeks like an explosion.

“And this stuff?”John looks carefully at the jar, turning it in his hand.“Wait, is this the slime that ended up all over our kitchen a few months ago?”

“Yes.A small and rather unfortunate aberration in the mixing process.”He shrugs.“But, now, voilà —Ectoplasm.”

“And you were just going to—what, plop it onto Anderson’s desk and hope he’d think Beetlejuice had paid him a visit?”

“Yep."

John is quiet for a few moments.He reaches forward to put the container carefully back onto the counter, then stares up at Sherlock, expression strained, and slides his hands onto his hips.“Seriously?”He shakes his head.“I’ve never heard anything so immature.That is…utterly unprofessional, Sherlock.”

“But, John, I—“

“No, Sherlock!”He grabs onto his shoulder knobs and gives a quick shake.“A real professional would use a caulk gun to gum up his files and make a huge splotch on the wall as the apparition’s exit point.For pity’s sake, Sherlock, I made you watch it a dozen times—did you learn _nothing_ from _Ghostbusters_?”John’s stern face doesn’t seem to move a muscle, but suddenly it is completely different, and a wicked gleam shows in his eyes.He bites his bottom lip.“Let me get my bag—pretty sure I’ve a feeding syringe in there…” 

He disappears down the hall with a giggle, and Sherlock’s hit with another wave of it, another wave of disbelief that this is really his life, that this perfect man belongs to him, saturates Sherlock from sole to crown.He’s convinced he could never love John more than at that moment.

That is, until four hours later when they can scarcely hold themselves up against the Coke machine at New Scotland Yard as Anderson tears through the bullpen with a white face, screaming, “They’re here!God help us all, they’re HERE!” 

Sherlock Holmes has experienced many things in his life, some terrible and some wonderful, but in all of his forty years, Sherlock’s never experienced laughing so hard that tears have streamed down his face like spring rain, to the point that his stomach muscles have ached with the strain.

John leans into him, shaking with laughter when Sally skitters by with a glare and a high-pitched, “Phillip, wait!” and Greg slowly slides behind his office door to hide his own snickers.

Maybe it is now.Maybe this is it. 

Maybe they’ll never be happier than they are right now.Maybe it will stop being new and wonderful and addictive. 

And maybe it won’t.

When John reaches up and grabs his face, wipes at the tear streak with his thumb, and pulls Sherlock down for a quick, messy kiss, just a click of teeth and smear of lips because he can’t keep his mouth from giggling, there’s just more.

There is much more.

Sherlock kisses his eyebrow and leans around to whisper in his ear.“Feels like the first time, you know.”

John circles his soft cheek against Sherlock’s and murmurs, “That’s what happens when you save the best for last.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I cannot tell you how much I appreciate that you've read to the end. If you've also been good enough to leave comments and/or kudos, just know that I am truly grateful for your time and your kindness.
> 
> If you've enjoyed this story, I would be honored if you would share it with others! Also, if you're willing, I'd absolutely love it if you'd read some of my other Sherlock and John stories!

**Author's Note:**

> Posting parts of a story is a nerve-wracking experience for me; I never know if or how it is received by an audience, so take pity and tell me what you think!
> 
> If you enjoy this story, PLEASE share it with others!


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